by Myles Tiessen (@myles_tiessen)
The prerequisite for listening to any METZ album is that the volume needs to be turned up to the absolute limit. The Toronto-based noise-rock trio has been breaking speakers and bleeding ears since their inception in 2007, rarely toeing the line of constraint or offering any form of sonic reprieve. That is, until now. Their new record, Up on Gravity Hill, is the band ever so slightly departing from the signature METZ sound. They approach these songs with a, dare I say, “lighter touch” in response to some of the heavier subject matter thematically present on the record.
With songs about loss, death, and grief, vocalist and guitarist Alex Edkins’ vulnerability is as ever-present on Up on Gravity Hill as his defiant alacrity on the six-string. Matching the tone of the grief-stricken “Super Mirage,” Edkins sings, “A faded photograph of someone I once knew/ Keeps staring back at me/ Preying on my mind/ Dreams we shared in disrepair are now falling out of view.” The track nears its end with a strange oscillating techno modulation that mirrors the repetitive cycle of lost family and friends he sings about.
Pinning down Up On Gravity Hill feels like throwing darts through a key ring twenty feet away. It’s sweeping yet consistent, unforgiving yet restrained, and it basks in the beauty of annihilation. Just when you feel like you have a grasp on it, the record nestles the frenzied “Never Still Again” next to the dazzling “Light Your Way Home.” If their last record, Atlas Vending – with all its paramount instrumental gymnastics – was the band embracing the maximalist freedom of noise rock, then Up On Gravity Hill is the trio reeling in the mania in exchange for clarity. The album trades in the broken-up, whiplash obfuscation for structural fluidity, showing METZ’s ability to rein in their sound without losing their edge.
Although Edkins is playing some of the best guitar he’s ever played, as always, drummer Hayden Menzies steals the show. It should go without saying that Menzies plays the kit with monstrous power, but it’s hard to believe that with every album, his dexterity behind the kit evolves. Listening to the chorus of “Glass Eye,” it sounds like the man trying to start an earthquake, but his patience on “Light Your Way Home” or hyper-rhythmic skipping on the showcase “Never Still Again” is jaw-dropping.
On the standout “99,” METZ constructs a blazing molten foundry. The punch-in, punch-out rhythm of Menzies’ drumming acting as the omnipresent clock, grinding up against the grating industrial guitar, paints the seminal image of exploitation and corporate greed that Edkins’ lyrics rally against. Chris Slorach underpins the whole track with his molasses-thick bass lines, throwing the song into ineffable darkness. Capitalism’s habit of putting profit before people is easy to see in the real world, but listening to it, wholly embalmed in the infernal mise en scène of “99,” feels particularly poignant.
METZ always sounds like METZ. You typically get exactly what you pay for, but the most jarring part of Up On Gravity Hill is the closer “Light Your Way Home.” While listening to the most muted track on the album, it’s hard to see this as the same band that opened their debut with the heart-racing “Headache.” METZ is a group that takes up space. They punch you in the gut just to spit on you while you’re face down in the mud. With its The Jesus and Mary Chain wall-of-sound paired with backing vocals from Amber Webber of Black Mountain, “Light Your Way Home” shows a new openness to METZ that we really haven’t seen before. The humanity on the song shows METZ as a group defiantly exploring the nauseating duality of beauty and pain. While you never want your punk bands to truly mature, a step towards growth is warmly welcomed.