by Corey Sustarich
A swirling pot of crooked hooks, haunting textures, and looming melodies make up Deliluh’s third release, Beneath the Floors. “Conceived under the gun” of an expiring visa and recorded in an old veteran’s hall, the new album demonstrates the band’s accomplishment in creating ten sinuous songs, working with what they had in the time they were given. Though a darker expansion of their catalogue, it is not removed from the sound of their previous two releases, Oath of Intent and Day Catcher.
Largely, this album swings between two very different tones. One is a weighty enormity that hangs like a shadow in the corner of your eye; the other, a prescribed burn that rages composed within its dimensions. “Hymn,” “Hangman’s Keep,” “Via 5A,” “Falcon Scott Trail,” and “Beneath the Floors,” ominously croon and undulate. Distant horns, swirling piano, howling wind, and cackling strings fill out and flutter while “Incantessa,” “Lickspittle: A Nut in the Paste,” and “Cleat Walker” smolder neatly. There are songs that toe the line, of course, like “Master Keys” and “Con Art Inc.” where drums plod through hovering textures — sometimes lily white gossamer, sometimes peppery granite.
Kyle Knapp’s signature punctuated vocal styling is ever-present in the narration of his casted characters: a young heroin addict, a drought-stricken farmer, a suicidal inmate, a security guard terror-stricken by his line of work, and a myriad of other shaken leaves stricken by cosmic horrors. In correlation with the two swinging tones, Knapp oscillates his voice between a spoken timbre, on tracks like “Hymn” and “Beneath the Floors,” to the pithy chants of “Lickspittle: A Nut in the Paste” and “Cleat Walker”.
While calling back to the noisy and abrupt themes of post-punk, Deliluh also plants its flag in the softer earth of cultivated ambiance. Their bracing together of these two approaches aggrandizes the songs that burn brightly and then pan eerily to the long shadows they cast.