Aluminum

There’s been plenty to love out of Oakland lately, but the Bay’s murkier ends have offered up some of the most enduring new offerings. Aluminum’s previous album established their sound, lodged between fogged folds of dreampop, shoegaze, and a rhythmic indie pounded by propulsion. For their latest, the fog is often blown away, replaced by a touch of smoke in its place. The band’s still burrowing into the bunkers of shoegaze, but this time they route their riffs through Marshall stacks for a guitar-forward sound that’s got a bit more bite. This can be heard from the first moments of lead single, “Killing Time,” a searing, soaring cut that lets the turbulence take the wheel, towing a haul of hooks right behind them.

They balance moments of lightness like the effusive, gauzy “Distant Noise” with the metal on fillings grind of some of their hardest sounds to date. The unsettling “Lovely People,” the explosion of opener “Give Me A Reason,” and the euphoric pulse of “Killing Time” loft the listener into the heat ray heaviness of their guitar grind. It’s a record rooted in uncertainty, anxiety, and a subconscious itch. The walls of society have come to crush Aluminum, but they push back with conviction. That’s not to say it’s all grit and grind. There are moments that reveal a pop pedigree on Iconoclast HaHa. The dream glaze of “Distant Noise” slips through the ’90s needle with fellow standouts “Styptic Power” and second-side standout “So Low.” The band’s making some huge strides on the new record and pushing back against the chafe with an 80-grit gripper that promises to reshape friction in their own image.

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