WHITECHAPEL – HYMNS IN DISSONANCE

(Andy Synn is as shocked as anyone at how good, and how heavy, the new album from Whitechapel is)

As someone who considers themselves a long-time fan of Whitechapel it wasn’t until I picked up the promo for their upcoming ninth(!) album, Hymns in Dissonance, that I realised I’ve been more of a lapsed fan of the band for even longer.

Truth be told, the last time I enjoyed a Whitechapel album front-to-back was their 2012 self-titled record (still my favourite out of everything they’ve done, though I’ll happily entertain any arguments in support of 2010’s absolutely monstrous A New Era of Corruption), and although I’ve given every subsequent release a shot – from the lazy Slipknot-isms of Our Endless War and The Mark of the Blade (arguably the lowest point, creatively speaking, point in the band’s career) to the increasingly popular, but also increasingly generic, sounds of The Valley and Kin – it’s largely felt like the past decade or so has been all about doing whatever it takes to maximise the band’s popularity, at the cost of what originally drew me to them in the first place.

And, look, I get why so many people like the latter two albums – Bozeman has a great singing voice, no doubt, and it’s clear how much effort he’s put into expressing the necessary emotion and processing his trauma on each record – but so much of their recent music has just been so aggressively bland (and, on the occasion where it actually does show some teeth, so blandly aggressive) that I can’t help but feel disappointed in them for continually playing things so safe.

Which is why Hymns in Dissonance is such a revelation – because I don’t think anyone out there expected them to go this hard, or this heavy, ever again.

Make no mistake about it, Hymns in Dissonance is a ridiculously, almost obnoxiously, heavy album, and quite possibly (read: probably) the densest, darkest slab of metallic menace the group have ever recorded.

“Heaviness” itself, however, is not synonymous with quality, as I’m sure we all know, and there have been a lot of bands over the years who’ve actually gotten better the less they’ve focussed on trying to be “heavy”.

Whitechapel, however, are not one of those bands.

If anything, the band’s gleeful exuberance as they continue to crank the dial further and further into the red – this is an album which already starts off at an 11 with the punishingly percussive triple-guitar attack and volatile, venomous, and viciously versatile vocals of “Prisoner 666” – is a big part of what makes it so good, as it really feels (and sounds) like the group have completely thrown caution (and commercial considerations) to the wind and decided to see just how far they can push things before the whole album collapses under its own weight.

That’s not to say it isn’t also catchy as hell when it wants to be – the humongous chorus of the aforementioned opener will stick with you for a long time afterwards, as will its insidiously infectious melodic moments (with the latter also making themselves known at key points during the savage, stomp ‘n’ slam of “Diabolic Slumber”) – but it’s definitely not an album that wants to connect with your higher brain functions (not straight away, at least).

At the same time, while it’s full of moments so gloriously, primordially dumb that you can almost feel yourself de-evolving into a more primitive, primal form – the first few minutes of the fantastic title-track, for example, are a blast-fuelled barn-burner… right up until the point the song decides to shift down a bunch of gears and, with a guttural expurgation of “WE ARE THE DISEASE!”, drop into one of the most unashamedly massive breakdowns of the entire year (which turns out just to be the first in a sequential series of stone cold stunners) – it’s also not a stupid album, by any means.

In fact, much as Dolly Parton once opined that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap” it turns out that it takes a certain amount of bloodthirsty intelligence to craft something this brutishly (and effectively) ignorant, and the only reason these moments of crushingly cro-magnon, IQ-lowering intensity (just wait until you get a load of the brain-damaging, Suffocation-esque mid-section of “A Visceral Wretch”) work as well as they do is because the band are smart enough to know precisely when, and where, to deploy them, in the most strategic manner, to maximise their impact and make best use of each track’s disgustingly dark dynamic.

As an example of this, early second-half highlight “Hate Cult Ritual” (whose ultra-high velocity delivery, multiple shred-tastic solos, and absolutely killer chorus refrain make it feel like a natural extension of the group’s self-titled era) errs more towards the technical side of the band’s repertoire until right at the very end, at which point it hits you with a grinding, gut-punch groove whose effect is further enhanced due to the way it so efficiently shatters all the tension which has been built up, while the breakneck gallop and brutish bludgeoning of “The Abysmal Gospel” spends most of its time hammering away at the “fight or flight” button in your brain, only to reveal its insidiously melodic underbelly late in the game, once you’ve been thoroughly subdued.

I’ll grant you that, over multiple listens, I’ve found that there’s a slight drop-off at around the 29 minute mark – despite a fun final riff, “Bedlam” doesn’t have enough dynamic variance in it to prevent it from feeling a tad one note, and “Mammoth God” might actually rely a little too much on its big melodic refrain, the jury’s still out on that one – but it’s a relatively small stumble, all in all, and one which is quickly rectified by climactic closer “Nothing Is Coming For Any Of Us”, which successfully combines the band’s newly-rediscovered love of eye-opening extremity and mind-numbing brutality with an outro so shamelessly epic it’d make Insomnium blush (if they hadn’t already been beaten into a proverbial pulp by the preceding 40-ish minutes, that is).

Look, I’m as surprised as you are by how much I love this album – sure, haters are still going to hate, and all that, and while I’m certain that at least some latter-day fans will pretend to love it quite a few of them are probably going to be upset by the complete lack of anything even remotely “radio friendly” this time around  – but to me it’s almost like the last decade or so didn’t happen and the band have picked up right where they left off after A New Era… and Whitechapel… only somehow even heavier than ever before.

And, again, I need to stress that “heaviness” isn’t everything…but, sometimes, if you do it just right, it’s all that you need!