Live review: Architects, The Garage, Glasgow

 I've heard the saying "Take the risk, reap the reward" used one or two times before but I've never really known who the quote is acknowledged to. Either way, I got a little taste of the quote for myself last night. See, you'd think that when you have long day at university in Aberdeen starting with a lecture at 9am, the last thing you'd want to do on the night before is get a train to Glasgow and go and see one an evening of some devastatingly loud groups including two of Britain's finest current metal bands with a friend you hadn't seen in ages. Yet, when my friend Mark who still has to endure several months at the High School of Dundee asked me if I was interested in getting tickets to see Architects, I knew I was there.

 I've installed some trust in the Glasgow Garage as a good place for a live show ever since seeing While She Sleeps live, a show that still stands out as one of my finest gigging experiences and tonight certainly doesn't fail to disappoint. Walking towards the venue, we pass the Glasgow O2 ABC, where the Rock Sound Riot Tour 2012, headlined by the similarly brilliant Billy Talent is taking place, but at The Garage, we have louder, meatier, more brutal and far more intense proceedings ahead of us.

 Walking up the stairs to the main stage, we can already feel our bodies shaking from the immense growling of the bass that comes from opening act The Acacia Strain, undoubtedly the bleakest names in the world of deathcore, who allow their selection of breakdowns to be slowly churned out one after the other with enough of a doom plated atmosphere for frontman Vincent Bennett to yell out lines from Black Sabbath songs and tell the crowd not to fear death. It's some onstage banter. As solid an effort as they put in the only real crowd reaction they receive is from the... (groans)... hardcore dancers. I have no idea where this trend came from but they were all over the place distorting their bodies all over the room looking like rejects from 28 Days Later, yet the overtly bleak deathcore of The Acacia Strain somehow soundtracked the tomfoolery perfectly. But if that band did anything they served as an instant reminder of just how loud the music is at gigs and some bands and their fans still strongly believe in using only brutality to communicate art.

 What we need then is a band that can harness that same kind of immense brutality and heaviness that The Acacia Strain possesses and use it in the process of writing genuine songs. Thankfully, the stunning Bury Tomorrow knows just what they're doing there. As we approach the front of the stage, the band emerge with a heroes welcome and triumphantly open to everyone's sheer delight with Lionheart, a song that truly boasts out the fresh direction that metalcore is travelling in to make it's triumphant return to the spotlight of all things respectable. It also means the entire crowd is leaping with delirium within seconds displaying nothing but ultimate love and admiration for this band. And as they play a short but memorable comprising largely of songs from this year's spectacular The Union of Crowns, the crowd fall head over heals for the dominating stage presence of Daniel Winter-Bates and soaring melodies of guitarist Jason Cameron sounding as awe-inspiring live as it does on record. Winter-Bates' most commanding moment comes out near the end of the band's set when the audience is commanded in a Slipknot-Spit it Out live-show way to get down on the ground and only leap up upon his command. I'm sure at one point, I jokingly shouted out "Not until I say 'Get the fuck up!'" and gaining lots of love from everyone. And it's done with absolute perfection, proving the beginnings of a life in bury Tomorrow that could take them towards the main stage of several festivals. And as they leave with a bigger reaction than The Acacia Strain and the act that follows, my faith in metal is restored.

 I left for the gig with the knowledge from a previous attender of a gig in which they performed that Deez Nuts are terrible live, but it was my turn to make my opinion on what the Brisbane rapcore crew are made of. At at first case it seemed like most people in the crowd were told that the band were terrible live and don't want to show any affection. And sure enough as they first appear on stage, the audience keep their feet firmly rooted to the ground with the occasional head bobbing a bit. The entire band are on monstrous form with the riffs and basslines from Matt Rogers and Jon Green sounding truly gnarly and one of the loudest features of the evening, but when you're in a group billed as a rap-influenced hardcore band, everyone wants to hear frontman JJ Peters doing some rapping and hear what kind of verses he can bust out, but it's often impossible to hear him over the rest of the band. It's a slow start, however, once the band see that they've gained enough of a crowd to satisfy their assaults they become more comfortable and gain a much larger reaction from the crowd. And as that happens, JJ becomes a far more engaging and welcomed frontman, gaining crowd affection as he recites lyrics to Tupac's Hail Mary to a riff-laden backdrop and dedicating new song Popular Demand to the late great Mitch Lucker. And so, they leave the stage with the admiration of the hardcore kids in baseball caps and gaining some love from the more sophisticated audience members.

 But the affection gained by all these bands tonight cannot even begin to compare to the cheering that soundtracks the jubilant welcome onstage to tonight's headliners. It's hard to believe that a band that formed in 2004 could already do something that could be considered a "greatest hits" set but Architects have delivered such a high quality with all their work that so many of their songs dominated by technical mastery and simultaneously catchy melodies have the sound of what you could consider a greatest hit. Opening with the monolithic and dramatic Alpha Omega from their highly acclaimed Daybreaker shows a lot of pride and rightful belief that they hold in their latest work. As they go on, they prove that in spite of their efforts to make a heavier album to put people's minds off of it, they still hold a lot of pride in last year's The Here and Now dropping Day in Day Out and Learn to Live early on in the set. And it's followed up with a large output of material from Daybreaker and 2009's legendary Hollow Crown meaning the grooves laid down by Tom Searle and touring guitarists Josh Middleton (There is still nowhere online to listen to Sylosis' Monolith online) and Adam Christianson gain such an immense reaction that the ground is practically left shaking from the massive jumping laid down to Dethroned, Follow the Water and the incredible Early Grave. I certainly haven't ever jumped so high in my life but the commanding presence of Sam Carter demands for a crowd to be on their feet at a constant rate. No excuses for anyone to not be feeling energized. And with the end of a show, a refreshed crowd have effortlessly screamed their lungs out to a greatest hits set of spectacularly written metalcore songs. We are watching a constantly underrated band that always had an ability to become leading forces in metal today take on another step in their continually growing plight to becoming the commanding forces they've long deserved to be. And what a beautiful sight it is.

 It was undoubtedly a spectacular gig back at The Garage with four amazingly heavy bands giving us a bangover of stony proportions. From the sludgy deathcore of The Acacia Strain to set everyone up for immense loudness to the hard-partying rap rock of Deez Nuts to the true evidence of a new generation in British metal letting out two of their finest voices in the form of Bury Tomorrow and Architects. Even if our leave is a little early, it is a wholly satisfactory one and we leave with smiles on our faces and it definitely feels like I've been rewarded for taking a massive risk to watch some metal. Of course their is the follow up to the gig today, which involves missing trains to Aberdeen, most of my day at University and also involving walking through Aberdeen at -1° C wearing only the beer-drenched T-shirt I wore at the gig on my upper half, but that's another story that shouldn't be delved into because I like to try and make myself look reasonably intelligent on this blog.

Review: Soundgarden - King Animal

 I want to fall head over heals with the fact that Soundgarden have finally released new material. I want to have been able to be completely engrossed with the band's reuinion at the start of 2010 after twelve years apart, but my music taste was far too based on worse glossier bands to know anything about the respectable history of rock music and when  finally got into them, I was so adjusted to the golden age of their sound that further new releases, footage of fairly disappointing live shows including this year's Download and Hard Rock Calling Festival and most recently a preview of what they might sound like through the release of the watered down Live to Rise that appeared as the lead single for The Avengers soundtrack this year. In the time it's taken for me to appreciate Soundgarden, it seems like they've lost their shine and it's difficult for me to see them as a perfect band no matter how brilliant they've constantly proved themselves to be.

 And so it brings me to King Animal. Now when a band comes to release a highly anticipated comeback album, you do want to love it, especially when it's been as long as sixteen years. But, I made the choice not to step into this album with any high expectations knowing the kind of form Soundgarden has been on recently. And with their sixth studio album, I sadly can't come out the other side with the blown mind and shattered expectations I was hoping I might have.

 Which isn't to say it doesn't have it's moment. Opening on the painfully self-aware Been Away Too Long, dirty grunge riffs are unloaded like it's 1993 again which blast straight into an enthusiastic state of action through roaring hooks lit up by a genuinely immense wail from Chris Cornell that shows that the band haven't loss any passion for making music as ferocious and passionate as they can. It's a bold statement by a band whose best days have quite clearly gone by that there is still some fight left in them, a moment that makes you say that they've matured rather than say they've aged. Even through the likes of Non-State Actor and Blood on the Valley Floor, (A better floor for blood to lie on than the Dancefloor, right?) Cornell proves himself to still be a truly entertaining performer with much charisma, while the distinct Eastern style lead guitar of Kim Thayil on the likes of Attrition and Taree is as breathtaking display of modern gripping rock and roll that treads the line between monstrous grunge and trippy stoner rock guitar work it ever was. There's no possible way that Soundgarden can't still be a great rock band and powerful emotional songwriters.

 But even in the strongest of Soundgarden's albums, they've always been albums that go maybe one or two tracks over the line. Superunknown could easily lose three or four tracks and still be a great if not better album but you can easily forgive it for the strongest moments being absolutely golden. With King Animal, the ultimate impression of the album is that if you got the strongest tracks on the album... it would be an EP. The likes of Bones of Birds and Halfway There are pleasant enough but Badmotorfinger and Superunknown have no room for pleasantries and becoming older shouldn't be a reason to do it either. I feel genuinely worried when Cornell says "Promise something/ kill me right away if I start to get slow" in the opening lines of Black Saturday. I couldn't bring myself to kill someone. It's tracks like these that Soundgarden immediately sounding aged. Cornell's vocals sound staler in the same way that Ozzy Osbourne's became stale after the '90's. And I'm confident that the band really is trying their hardest. And that just scares me, frankly.

 With that, I personally find myself walking away from King Animal feeling once again more unsatisfied with Soundgarden than I really should be. It undoubtedly has it's strong moments and many a moment to prove the band to be a group of accomplished songwriters, but these moments don't come in high numbers and the amount of songs sounding as tame as their recent festival performances are sadly plentiful. If this is how I feel, then I can't imagine how the people that were fully gripped by the news of the band's comeback in 2010 must feel about the kind of overall performance on this album. It means I'll probably never have the chance to consider myself a full-on Soundgarden fan that I'd love to be, but if the overall quality of their albums are like this in my time of being into them, can you really blame me?

Soundgarden's King Animal is out now via Universal Republic Records.

Review: Deftones - Koi No Yokan

 So, what kind of things can I talk about when dealing with the most consistently brilliant and underrated bands in metal? Many modern metal and alternative bands have taken time to become absorbed within the likes of Deftones' White Pony, Around the Fur and Adrenaline. All albums have found their way to becoming massive points of influence within some of the best names in metal and alternative music today and I can think of no band more deserving as being fully seen as a group of individuals who inspire others to make art like they do themselves.

 Now, everyone was left begging for more after the blinding return to top form that came with 2012's Diamond Eyes, the band's first full album after bassist Chi Cheng tragically went into a coma following a car accident in 2008 and even at that time, it was startling enough that the band were willing to bring out a new album, never mind bringing out one so amazing. So, you can never be too demanding when expecting a new Deftones release. But man, a new album from them is always worth getting excited for and if seventh album Koi No Yokan doesn't have you feeling that way, I can only offer my sympathies because this album really is the sound of divinity recorded.

 You hear bands claiming that they have it all. They can bring together the best of all kinds of music and it works for lots of bands, but Deftones truly is on another level. They could honestly make an entire album filled with jaw-droppingly heavy riffage and make a full on metal album and it could still be one of the best metal albums ever heard. Just look at the intense pit-stirring riffage that opens the album of Swerve City, a powerhouse blaze of chunky guitars from Stephen Carpenter and the drilling basslines of Leather from current bassist Sergio Vega, a nailing performance that proves Vega to be more than just a stand in for Chi Cheng. And as Poltergeist slams into it's main sections, the combination of bizarre guitar switches and blasting bass is a sign of the band sounding at their most punk-like and youngest, sounding like Deftones-meets-Dillinger.

 But as proven through various side-projects, Deftones could also make an album that focuses only on creating lush textured soundscaping and it would still be a constant wonder to listen to with musical passages that you can lose yourselves in with every breath of keyboards. Tempest boasts the perfect fresh atmosphere's that you can simply sink into while the beauty of Rosemary in it's state of synthesizer led tranquility is a moment more jaw dropping and eye opening than some other bands can manage with their album's heaviest moment.

 But the fact that the entire album is made of the union of these two musical styles once more makes this album a feast of beautiful alternative metal, refreshing in the band's ability to still make music that keeps you guessing what's coming next. And it's tied together so finely in the gripping wonder that is the vocals of alt metal icon Chino Moreno, whose seamless transitions between soothing melodic vocals and frenetic screams boasts the kinds of emotional tone that can convey a man having a breakdown. And the depth reached on the likes of Gauze and the effortlessly simple What Happened to You? is made of star reaching wonder. It makes you fall in love with the world, with life and with music.

 Can I say any more about how beautiful this album is? Can I say any more about how wonderful, influential and powerful a force in music the Deftones are that they can still make what is a very pure piece of artwork that stuns, shocks and amazes in all they do, whether it's crushing heaviness and absorbing electronics and bring it together in a form that ranges from boastful to intimate. And with six powerful albums behind them, they still have the creativity and strength to make something as beautiful as Koi No Yokan. They truly are one of the most consistently great, influential and underrated bands of all time. And now that the blog name of "Ramblings" is truly living up to it's name, this is one of the finest metal releases we've heard in a long time.






Deftones' Koi No Yokan is out now via Reprise. The band will tour the UK in February.

Review: Issues - Black Diamonds

 The amount of people I hear speaking across the world who firmly believe that metal and pop should be segregated like night and day is frankly unreal. We should be more open to varying tastes today and this clear barrier between style of music should not exist. You can't just not like a style of music because it's pop music, right? There's so much close-mindedness in the metal community that sometimes it's little wonder that many bands begin to sound the same and you're naturally drawn to those that think outside the box. The kind of band that would, say, take as big an influence from pop music as they would metal music when writing their songs. A band like Atlanta quintet Issues, made up of several former members of the awful Woe, Is Me finding new feet in the world of music, who are quite literally making us ask what the point of genres are.

 With nowhere to turn as a means to describe this band, the term "Rn'B metal" has been coined to sum up the band's mixture of crushing metallic breakdowns and viscous growling with soaring pop melodies and club friendly electronic backdrops. Many have already come to experience this with lead single King of Amarillo from debut EP Black Diamonds. As massive breakdowns awash with furiously bitter lyrics that point towards the music industry, twisted love-lives and even a dig at their former bandmates in Woe, Is Me (We might have a whole new Metallica/Megadeth type feud on our hands people!) this is clearly a band with a clear ability to make hard hitting metalcore on their hands. And within the backdrop of the song massive synthesized backdrops build up that sound completely unlike anything else that... most of Rise/Sumerian Records have managed so far. Most of all the synthesizers have their own identity and style that sounds fresh in the realms of pop and the electronic metalcore scene. And with a combination of rapid-fire DJ scratching and the powerfully glossy vocals of frontman Tyler Carter, the buildup in pop friendly tones becomes more and more apparent. It reaches the final conclusion as the song's mid-section fades into synth-infused actions as a sly Rn'B beat rises up and the electronic-led mid section sounds akin to something taken from Justin Timerlake's Justified before the seamless transition into a monolithic breakdown takes place. It's a performance that defies all songwriting logic and a breath of fresh air within the realms of pop and metal music.

 The rest of the EP continues in a similarly thrilling vain as The Worst of Them charges into action with the structure of a conventional Rn'B chart topper backed by a blasting of bulked up riffage from AJ Rebollo and the instant pulse of Princeton Ave's gripping hardcore chug-along. It's mid-section could well be in the charts and the emotion in Carter's melodic choruses is in terms of mainstream Rn'B singers at least of Jason Derülo quality. Yeah, I just appreciated a mainstream pop musician like that. Meanwhile Love Sex Riot sees the band in unafraid party-mode with big Rn'B rhythms while the massive dubstep poundings of Her Monologue shows the band completing the motion with the one musical moment that unites pop with metal music these days.

 Now, if you really do hate pop music and the idea of the charts is purely vomitory and subsequently hate the idea of such a union with metal coming together, I can't even try and make this album appeal to you but if it's a union that you'd be willing to see happen, you're unlikely to find any better source of pop/metal mixture than on Black Diamonds. Every breakdown pulses with rabid energy and every vocal is passed down with passionate emotion whether it's smoothly sung by Carter and Micheal Bohn's screams. And every work of pop friendly electronica is delivered with gleaming production of club-friendly coolness. With so many bands attempting to mix modern pop with brutal metal together, Issues have managed to make their pop mixture just as potent a force in their songwriting rather than a background gimmick. And it works really well. And in a world where so many people still believe that pop and metal should be segregated like night and day, Issues are on hand to prove so many wrong.

Issues' Black Diamonds is out on 13th November via Rise.

Review: All That Remains - A War You Cannot Win

 All That Remains seem like a fairly easy band to judge right. They've seemed to be at the butt of various jokes made by the "more-metal-than-thou" community in the face of some brilliant albums that have displayed much passion, soul and nothing more than some textbook American metalcore, while serving as a great gateway band for those just getting into metal in a missing link between Bullet for My Valentine and Lamb of God sort of way. And if having well-crafted songs makes you a joke in the world of metal, then I guess the naysayers have a lot to laugh about. And in a world where you can jump the shark in music as well as TV shows, I''m going to take the side of the naysayers when looking at their sixth album A War You Cannot Win.

 I think this album is a valuable lesson that when you are dealing as a melodic metalcore band that write songs with big choruses mixed with breakdowns there really is a limit on how far you can take your music before you're unable to wow anyone anymore, no matter what you try. Because that is definitely the case with All That Remains and it's made all the more tragic as they're clearly aware that they've so far made very similar albums so far and are trying to do some things differently, yet the only good parts of the album are the furious breakdowns of You Can't Fill My Shadow and Sing For Liberty and you have four albums for better breakdowns you can look at.

 The most ironic thing about the performance of frontman Phil Labonte on this album is that looking at tracks like A Call to All Non Believers and Just Moments in Time, it's clear that Labonte is trying to stamp out his very own identity on these tracks to a greater extent than he's ever done before and these tracks come off as being the All That Remains tracks with the least personality ever displayed. This is quite possibly the sound of commercial heavy metal at it's blandest.

 I can only go on to say that this album is officially the sound of a band becoming officially watered down. You probably officially recognise that sound when you heard Killswitch Engage's second self-titled album from 2009 and know that Killswitch have always been heavier than ATR. Some of the signs of the band being watered down is unreal, with Asking Too Much sounding less metalcore and more like Stone Sour. Of course when considering House of Gold and Bones, Part 1 that remark should be nothing but a compliment but it even makes the Iowa quintet's Through Glass sound like Sepultura in terms of heaviness and extremity. And then of course, they have a shot of writing a ballad in the form of What If I Was Nothing, which listening to reminds me of the first time I listened to Def Leppard's Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. Yes, painful.

 With those two songs being powerful examples of All That Remains' venture into more commercial territory, most other parts just make you ask why of them like the immense poppy intro of Not Fading and the album's title track trying to build up a post hardcore influence in it's intro. It's so needless.

 And I'm afraid to say that this is the ultimate impression this album leaves on me. I do love All That Remains and firmly believe they have a stellar back catalogue and this album does some some good moments. Even in it's poppiest, there are some good hooks and when they do nail out the metalcore performance we know them so much better for it's still solid. But I really don't know what's gone on with this band overall. Are they really becoming another band that will rely on getting their songs played on the radio to make it big? It certainly sounds like it on a lot of these songs and their attempts to venture into crafting post grunge melodies and balladry. It goes on to make me worried about so many of these gateway metal bands in a similar vein of All That Remains and if they can survive this gateway band territory with six albums. Probably not. They either need to get heavier again or concentrate more on writing hooks because right now they're in an aimless middle section and the naysayers are pissing themselves with laughter.

All That Remains' A War You Cannot Win is out now via Razor & Tie.

Review: Green Day - ¡Dos!

 So, if Green Day wanted to leave us on a high in late September following the release of ¡Uno!, the first installment of their three albums of charged up pop punk, they failed pretty hard. As if it wasn't easy enough to take us away from the set of bland pop rock songs and horrendous attempts of being The Rolling Stones, the only thing anyone was talking about is Billie Joe Armstrong's expert way in promoting the album by smashing his guitar up onstage, telling the audience that he's been around since nineteen eighty fucking eight and entering rehab for substance abuse. Good ane!

 However, the show must go on and as Billie Joe continues his tenure in rehab, the album cycle continues with ¡Dos! Even though Green Day have shunned away any concept crafting for these albums there's some metaphorical suggestions that could be made with ¡Uno! That album featured a picture of Billie Joe on the cover. It turned out he was in an awful state and the album is awful. With ¡Dos!, bassist Mike Dirnt is clearly in a much better state of health because this album is a notable step up in quality. Even with the state of irony that opens the album with Billie Joe's overtly upbeat solo opening of See You Tonight to the irony of acoustic closer Amy, a beautifully written tribute to the late soul revivalist Amy Winehouse with Armstrong's sincere lyrics of how he'd like to meet her and be her friend, which looking at Billie Joe now... I guess he did go to rehab.

 But in between these two slices of irony flavoured bread, there is a surprising selection of massive pop punk bangers. Straight from Tré Cool's bold drum beat on Fuck Time the band start throwing serious punches in their their entire pop rock assault and the driving hooks of Stop When the Red Lights Flash and Makeout Party. On guitar, Armstrong obviously constructs the same riff over and over again but somehow gives each song a new sugary coating of freshness and energy and by the time we hit the grooves of Lady Cobra the Green Day mojo that had been drained on ¡Uno! has managed to rush back.

 As well as truly rocking out with this album, Green Day just sound so much more like they're having fun on this collection of songs that doesn't just fall under the pop punk formula. Stray Heart is lushly delivered with the good-boy charisma of Buddy Holly with a swinging melody that you can't really do anything but dance to. Even the more emotion driven songs are perfectly headbang-worthy as the melancholic tone of Lazy Bones is a perfect show of life affirming power pop.

 While a notable step up from it's predecessor, ¡Dos! is still far from being the perfect album that I'm building it up as so far. By the time we get to Wow! That's Loud, I will be impressed if you haven't become frustrated by the constant amount of times that Armstrong notably sounds like he's just doing Iggy Pop impressions in his vocals and once again the time when they try to do something different is largely shoddy. In this case, it's Nightlife which sees the band use a form of songwriting used in the kind of songs that topped the charts in the late 90's and early 00's. A slowly paced seductive club anthem I guess. It's another one of those things Green Day shouldn't try even in their attempts to use this style to project lyrics about the darker sleazier side of partying. But for such a wonderfully upbeat album that spreads a lot of emotion, this is just unpleasant listening.

 With  these exceptional qualities, ¡Dos! actually makes the prospect of three new albums from Green Day finally something worth looking into. The melodies sound sweeter, the riffs sound bigger and the thought put into the songwriting and lyrics seems far more fulfilled. Again, it's no sign of pure perfection from Green Day and there are a good amount of moments where the quality slips, but when considering the state of ¡Uno! and the current state of Billie Joe Armstrong, it's relieving more than anything that pop punk's main inspirations can still deliver the goods at such a late stage into their careers. And if ¡Tré! is able to deliver anything better, we're sorted.

Green Day's ¡Dos! is out on 9th November via Relapse.

Review: Hildamay - Miles Away

 It was one of those few moments of instantly falling in love with a band with one song when I first heard Hildamay's This House Became Our Home on Scuzz TV last year. I wasn't even sure how to possibly explain it. It so so sludgy but at the same time sounded so fresh in the same way that it could compete with the constant range of new post hardcore bands that were coming out with the promise of getting big last year. And last year's mini album We Loved We Lost was enough to top many other new bands coming out at the same time. However, with their debut full length album Miles Away, the band's time to shine has fully expanded out into the spotlight.

 Throughout your listening to the album, you're left travelling through pounding seas of massive riffage, tight boastful production and top class songwriting to come to a conclusion that leaves you realising the full range of emotion and tone that individuals are able to write with and the ability to do that displaying the passion for making rock and roll that we are so desperately in need of.

 This album opens straight away with this shade of talent on the emo-esque melodies that open the album on The Dark as guitarists Ollie Jeffs and Chris Carvell tear into massive post hardcore riffage with Thrice influences worn on their sleeves. These ripping melodies can be heard blitzing across the likes of Changing Key and the emotively tragic Diminuendo packed with massive post hardcore melodies and gigantic sized breakdowns that feel more like Refused in their overall rush of anger and melancholy.

 But having experienced that across much of We Loved, We Lost it's surprising to hear some more uplifting material across the album. Broken Records opens in characteristically heavy fashion but has a far more upbeat tone, sounding like a beefed up New Found Glory. Even the sludgy vocals of frontman Tim Lawrence carry out in a warmer style for this song and reach a cleaner melodic style for the shimmering title track with that carries off big hooks and a unshakable beauty.

 The amount of mellower moments on Miles Away has also notably increased and show a more sensitive side of Hildamay. Letters Like Bullets and Consequence are the first two songs that give Hildamay the impression of being something resembling an emo band as Lawrence pours out a display of internal emotion that keeps you completely hooked. And as the album goes out on the lashing Because I Cannot Sleep I Make Music packed with dense basslines, you've gone through a wide spectrum of emotions that surpassed far more expectations than were ever imagined.

 It's difficult to think of how to describe Hildamay. They play powerful post hardcore music filled with massive grooves beatdowns and solid rock riffing and play it with a powerful emotion just like so many of their contemporaries. But you're so unlikely to find a band that sound so complete as they do this year. They convey the full range of emotion even when sounding fully beefed up on hardcore grit and can sound furious while boasting a velvet laced production. And that makes listening to this album a true privilege. Definitely one of 2012's finest releases.

Hildamay's Miles Away is out now via A Wolf at Your Door. The band will tour the UK in December.