Earlier this year Strangers really grabbed my interest with their four-song EP, Holding. On that release, five individuals from New Zealand delivered a devastating aural assault. So here we are a couple of months down the road and Strangers have unleashed their debut full-length, Weight, upon the masses.
The album begins with "Expositions," a two-minute number that picks up exactly where the band left off on Holding. The first half is an aggressive onslaught of metallic hardcore and d-bet grime; the second half features dominating drumming and extra awesome riffs. And when you factor in vocalist Rhydian Thomas' vicious vocals, the result is truly destructive. "Meursault Blues" is the first of the EP tracks that we have in re-recorded fashion. One difference that is noticeable when comparing the two is the quality of the recording on new version. As opposed to the grittiness of the EP, the LP has a slightly more glossy and produced sound - something that I feel does unfortunately bring the album's intensity and urgency down a notch.
"You Crawl" follows and slows things down a bit and plods along in a Neurosis-esque type fashion. And even though the pace has been scaled back, the intensity of the music is still running at a hundred percent. "Time is Waiting in the Street" is kind of a combination of the sound heard on the preceding track and that of the opening two songs. It walks the fine line between brooding metal and dissonant hardcore.
A re-recording of "Teenagers" quickly turns things on its end though, returning to the visceral d-beat/metallic hardcore sound heard earlier - think Cursed's II. "NOMA" is a fairly interesting segue track that is an instrumental with a sample concerning religion playing throughout. The song acts as a halftime, giving you a breather, but at the same time gives you something to think about.
"With Faces Like the Backs of Thumb Tacks" thrusts things back into action; there are some excellent guitar riffs that bring to mind Paint it Black's Paradise. This is followed by the re-recorded versions of "Howl" and "Holding," the latter of which is still my favorite song they've written. "Overborn" concludes Weight and clocks in at over five-minutes, easily the band's longest song. The song kind of follows the style used on "You Crawl" with its drawn out and repetitive song structure.
Lyrically, Thomas is on a similar path that he set out on Holding. The songs still read more like prose than your typical lyrics. It's definitely a refreshing thing to come across when it seems the average band can't even come up with an original way to talk about topics that have been rehashed a thousand times over.
The layout of Weight is accented with photographs of various landscapes around New Zealand. The design really reminded me of Life Long Tragedy's Destined for Anything, something atypical of hardcore.
With my copy of Weight was packaged a lyrical and visual booklet. The multi-page glossy booklet contains the lyrics to each song on the album as well as a visual interpretation of those words and song by an artist. This is an awesome idea and further adds to the aesthetic of the album (Note: Only 24 of these were made, so they're most likely gone by now).
Weight is an excellent offering of punishing hardcore punk and really drives home that there is a lot of great music coming from unlikely locales. We take our underground music for granted in the U.S., so even if you don't enjoy Strangers - although you really should - take the time to search out some new music from around the globe.
