In the late 90’s and early 00’s, a handful of hardcore bands evolved the genre and subsequently wrote themselves into the history books. Sweden’s Refused introduced the genre to radical politics and jazz. Converge pioneered new ways to be heavy. At The Drive-In determinedly pushed the borders of the genre with their experimentation.
Due to the influence of this wave of bands, many are staging comebacks. These range from “NO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”, in the case of Refused, to “ah that’s pretty good, I guess” in the case of At The Drive-In.
Glassjaw’s first album in 15 years, Material Control, is more akin to Converge breaking up after Jane Doe, and coming back with The Dusk in Us. If you’re not familiar with Converge’s legendary catalogue, let’s just say that would be a pretty fucking spectacular comeback.
Material Control takes Worship and Tribute’s unashamed experimentation and feeds it through the rawness of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence, to create an album that see’s the band sounding just as hungry as they were at the beginning of the last decade. The problem with leaving such a huge gap between album releases is it creates an unmanageable amount of hype from a bands fanbase. In many cases, this leaves bands sounding like their reaching for something that’s in the past (see: modern Metallica). Glassjaw, on the over hand, sound just as vital and important as ever.
The album kicks off with ‘new white extremity’, which lurches between brutal hardcore and unnerving dissonance. Daryl Palumbo gives a typically understated performance comparative to the music, but its one that bleeds a quiet intensity.
From there, Glassjaw give you everything from thrash metal soloing on ‘shira’, to beatdown hardcore on ‘citizen’, to experimental percussion jams on ‘bastille day’. Strangely, the album is backloaded with some of their most traditional sounding tracks. ‘bibleland 6’ features Worship and Tribute staples of bass grooves and brooding chorus. Not frontloading the album with songs like this shows just how much Glassjaw believe in their vision.
Sometimes its hard to believe the hype surrounding an album like this. After all, critics may be hesitant to trash a band that they grew up listening to. Believe us when we say that the critics are, in this instance, correct. Material Control is a shot in the arm to a scene where most of their contemporaries are half their age.
