With a heavier injection of punk in the band’s scuzzy rock this time out, singer Natalie Foster traded in some of her foreboding introspection for a more in-your-face delivery, as she targets social ills with fist-raising force. It was a move that fully caught the quartet in their element, with the band deliberately leaving in rough edges to dial up the realness. Striving to continue the fuzzy urgency of their Late Teens debut – which, despite coming out in Australia in 2018, only got a UK release in January this year – this second collection was tracked live in one week in the band’s self-built studio underneath Melbourne’s Westgate bridge. That intent is so potent on Wasted Energy it’s as if you’ve licked the dancefloor at one of their sweaty basement gigs. Melbourne garage-rockers Press Club want their records to fully capture the untamed nature and fluid power of their raucous live shows. A difficult work, then, but one that announced Ithaca as a powerful voice in British heaviness. Yet it is precisely these challenging moves that made The Language Of Injury so rewarding. In fact, her dislocated wails intensify the sense of communication breakdown. Similarly, the introduction of clean singing does not soften vocalist Djamila Azzouz’s attack. Halfway though, (No Translation) offers a moment of reprieve with ambient guitars suspended over indistinct chatter, yet the air of alienation and doubt is still keenly felt.
There is also an unpredictability here that gives Ithaca a twitchy edge.
Whiplash rhythms and mathy guitar squiggles wind around each other like a deadly game of cat and mouse on Impulse Crush, before coalescing into a hammering beatdown. Yet from the ashes of all that pain and anger, Ithaca crafted one of the most ingenious and gripping metallic hardcore albums of the year.įrom the scree of feedback and nerve-shattering drums that open New Covenant, The Language Of Injury seethes with barely-concealed frustration. Although Ithaca formed on a South London industrial estate in 2012, the years between their critically lauded 2015 EP Trespassers and the release of their debut full-length this February was marked by seismic personal upheavals: family loss, losing jobs, personal relationships turning toxic. The Language Of Injury is a product of intense pressure and time. Sure, it was hardly a surprise that a record from this band is as good as this, but there’s an unexpected glee in their discovery of new fuel to make the Torche continue to burn brighter still. From the opening rapid-fire of From Here, through to the lurching doominess of On The Wire, every ounce of grizzled experience is put to work to delirious, speaker-testing effect. That’s not to say there was any danger of the Miami quartet going soft, of course, and jagged edges, abrasive textures and concussive left-hooks land throughout. Reminder, meanwhile, arrives with a thrilling burst of woozy nostalgia, and brilliant, fuzz-encrusted closer Changes Come is adrift with exquisitely thoughtful melodic intent. The title-track sets out the stall stunningly, a four-minute meditation of self-induced isolation swimming in a dreamy electronica far closer to Joy Division than Melvins. With Admission, however, they swerved into more expansive territory, pressing horizons further than ever before and daringly experimenting with elements of shoegaze, ambience and even synth-pop. Everything they do feels machine-tooled to crush and enchant. Over the course of their previous four albums, they’ve mastered the art of slow-burn bludgeon, piling on layer after layer of thick sound with limitless patience and unrelenting focus.
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