METZ are wizards for turning noise rock into dimensional bliss. Since 2007, the Toronto punks – guitarist Alex Edkins, bassist Chris Slorach, and drummer Hayden Menzies – have fostered their own distorted palette, nailing overlays of Fugazi, Hoover, and Minor Threat to disorientating guitar gossamer that views headbanging as an art form. 2012’s ‘S/T’ and 2015’s ‘II‘ isolated skate punk’s feral influences and the high of losing a molar at a basement show; ‘Strange Peace’ tapped into harmonies, Steve Albini, and the dualities of ‘Liar’ and ‘Head’; and ‘Atlas Vending’ queued heavier frequencies, leaving the door open for ‘Up On Gravity Hill’ – a full-length effort that surfs through two decades of moods and perspective shifts to ricochet into an entirely new form of whiplash.
‘Up On Gravity Hill’s’ strengths are in the band’s fixation with intricacies. For METZ, it’s a shorter record (8 songs, 34 minutes) but it never wastes space; it improvises on it – turning the group’s impressionistic moments into gorgeous clouds of noise that leave room for nuance. The songs aren’t choked by pop or dad-punk romanticism as they are still four-minute blisters that feed off velocity, drum surges, and a kaleidoscopic approach to leaving you with your jaw in your hands. “As an artist there’s so much you want to do and so much you love,” Edkins admitted in a new interview with Treble. “When you look at one person’s record collection, it’s not just one type of music, it’s everywhere. And it can all be a part of you and your tastes and your appreciation of art… If you just go along [in life] with your head down for too long, you can lose sight of that.”
With ‘Up On Gravity Hill’, the trio fall headfirst into dissonance to find different highs of their own. ‘No Reservation/Love Comes Crashing’ is a six-minute opener that shouldn’t even exceed four, but it does and throws gnarled guitars, drum fills, and post-rock blurs into pockets of escapism while Owen Pallett rips the violin to ‘Daydream Nation’. ‘Glass Eye’ and ‘Never Still Again’ push familiar tempos, spacing out Dischord riffs, parallels of impermanence, and Menzies’ desire to throw off your heartbeat, while ‘Wound Tight’ daydreams in Pavement with Edkins crooning on about ‘no peace of mind’ like a post-punk dad still strung out on anxieties and ‘Marquee Moon’. On ‘Light Your Way Home’, he’s stuck counting the lost days, trading delicate sentiments with Black Mountain’s Amber Webber while waves of distortion anatomize his heart like a Kaufman screenplay: ‘It’s never the right time to make it right / I’d set it all on fire to light your way home”.
Edkins and METZ are at their best, though, when the smallest nuances spiral out at full volume. ‘Entwined (Street Light Buzz)’ drives a ‘Nevermind’ riff into punch-ins, disjuncture, and an early ‘90s post-hardcore glow before lodging it right back into your skull, while ‘Superior Mirage’ pins makeshift Linn Drum sounds to one of the sexiest basslines to be pressed on a Sub Pop vinyl. The band let loose, letting their thrashing magnetism slip into new territory as the trio alternate between greater emotional depth and a need to throw instrumental crashes at your blind spot. ‘Up On Gravity Hill’ isn’t political, off-kilter, or a pop move dislocated from reality; it’s a tribute to ‘Live At The Opera House’s’ chemistry and how it’s still bleeding profusely, post-’Atlas Vending’. It’s METZ’s most confident record so far and a deafening reminder that art wasn’t designed to adhere to paint-by-numbers standards – it’s meant to bend until it breaks into something new.
8/10
Words: Joshua Khan
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