Despair, death, distress, desolation, drama, and plenty of other words beginning with the letter 'D' have inspired numerous corners, most prominently metal and noise/industrial. Countless artists within these two schools have manifested groundbreaking material invoked by such grim themes. After decades of hearing such work, it begs a question: Will this climate's effect have as much significance as it did upon first encounter? This won't apply to all readers, but it's become a trial to determine whether some output of this essence is inspired or contrived.
Los Angeles outfit Wreck And Reference are of the former opinion, and though their latest album hasn't a label to vouch for its impact, Krallice guitarist and Dysrhythmia bassist Colin Marston is a weighty endorsement mixing and mastering it with an astute ear for tonal gravity. One could applicably consider them a metal act, though they transcend conventions. The band was limited on their debut, sporting low-budget production and formidable orchestration hampered by it.
No Youth is anything but inhibited, which may explain why it's most commonly classified within the vague umbrella of "experimental metal." Subtle, cyclical electronics and somber bass open "Spectrum", its evolution from grace to grind laid out in the verse, "Swaddled in embroidery, so dear / Diverting critical gaze / Wrought now, but take to it / With hammer, chisel, hatchet, and blade." Toms encircle the morose landscape, and pained screams pierce through the melody. This opener and other choice moments reveal that Wreck And Reference recurrently incorporate fundamental aspects of black metal into the album.
Further into No Youth, the divide between noise rock, drone, doom metal and its many counterparts becomes obscured as the band settles into their own surroundings. Their aforementioned method of progression works in an even greater favor on "Nausea", deriving not only black metal's indwelling vocals but its unforgiving blast beats as well, seamlessly jelling with harmonic swells and reserved baritone phrasing. "I Am A Sieve" bears a confounding structure, its mantra-like chorus stifled into silence and resuscitating with a bout of tumbling drums. "Winter"'s digitally manipulated incantations are unnerving in and of themselves, while the hair-raising monologue on "Edifice Of Silt" is carried by a strait of unearthly noise.
Colin Marston's accompaniment can be found on some of the current decade's most genre-bending work, including Zs' New Slaves and Liturgy's Aesthethica, and Wreck And Reference's innovations are of the same caliber as those milestones. No Youth is a disjointed and unorthodox listen impossible to typecast. It may be shot down for being so, but critics would find difficulty citing a finer alternative.
[Wreck and Reference Myspace]
[Stream/Download No Youth from Bandcamp]
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