How does one approach a band like Siamese anymore, a band who, post-self-titled 2015 album, have maybe had single digits’ worth of interesting ideas? With caution and severely depleted expectations, is the most obvious answer. It’s not a rarity for this super-melodic, super-produced metalcore, of which—let’s be honest—Siamese are no exceptional case, one way or the other. It’s almost unthinkable in their current guise to think they were Siamese Fighting Fish in a past life, proprietors of wiry, crackling progressive post-hardcore that’s since been deeply snowed over. The gulf between that and a slicker-than-slick R&B-core act doing covers of The Weeknd would make the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the pavement.
On Elements, then, Siamese have tried their hand at Ariana Grande’s God Is A Woman, as the firm stopper (if it were needed) to any notion of going back to roots even being on the table. They’re in it for the long haul, though that doesn’t seem as quite as tiresome a prospect as in the past. Somehow this is the one where the switch has been flipped, and Siamese sound more agreeable in their pop-core guise than they have in ages. It’s a little incongruous, not gonna lie, given that design philosophy hasn’t been altered that much. Though, maybe that’s where Siamese bring out the best in themselves—when they’re trying their hardest not to be a metal band.
Want proof? Well, just look towards God Is A Woman, one of Elements’ least ingenuitive cuts thanks to dusting off the Punk Goes Pop formula of basic chugs over effectively the unchanged skeleton of the original. Right down to the lyrical flips and pronoun changes, it’s as bog-standard as these ventures come, and more than a little dated. Bands would do things like this to kerjigger a viral moment a decade ago, and those pretenses have become remarkably easy to telegraph. Might as well lump This Is Not A Song in the same boat, as a dedicated mosh ‘anthem’ led by the grating TikTok text-to-speech voice as its main selling point / blindingly obvious gimmick. They’re ideas that are very much beneath Siamese now, or really anyone in even tangential metalcore spaces. Yet they still crop up, and Elements loses some footing as a result.
Thankfully, there are more instances of Siamese displaying some actual creativity, maybe even the faintest smidge of forward-thinking. It is mild—as standard dictates from the twin vices of mirror-sheened Euro-metal and Bad Omens-core—but at the very least, it’s noticeable. Siamese lean more explicitly on not just pop, but also specific strains of hip-hop and house, which attunes the blemishless production to them more readily. Through My Head actually seems comfortable slotting in drill warps on its more tempered verses; meanwhile, there are solid cues of drum ‘n’ bass on Predator and even big-room house on On Fire. The temptation to sever metalcore ties is there, but not acted upon too rashly. It’s what keeps Siamese on the rails, at the end of the day, and unlike others, it’s more a ballast than an outright crutch.
That, ultimately, is what keeps Siamese from smashing asunder their scene boundaries, too. Amongst it all, Elements is an album where the expected composite parts are intact, and typically executed as you’d expect. Mirza Radonjica is the expectedly dexterous singer for whom towering pop earworms come naturally, like on Chemistry or Utopia. Around him is a mix seemingly played to binary modes of light airiness or darker density, with some extra flecks of colour for good measure. If Siamese came across like they weren’t so adept at this exact thing, you could easily consign this album to the landfill that most indistinguishable Arising Empire slop finds itself sent to. But…it’s not that. On paper, it may seem like it is, but Siamese evidently have something crystallised in their back pocket to do away with the usual apathy.
The thing is, that was Siamese not very long ago. Hell, it was them on the last album, and that was only three years ago! By comparison, that makes Elements a little more impressive than it otherwise is, but that’s not a knock on Siamese at all. They have improved, clearly, through a combination of small-but-impactful changes and proficiency that’s increased by just enough to matter. And while Elements is still no masterstroke, in its field jam-packed with faceless nobodies, there’s at least the briefest chance of something from here holding on and sticking around. In the context of what Siamese have been and what inordinately plenty of others around them still are, that’s an accomplishment.
For fans of: Bad Omens, VRSTY, Thousand Below
‘Elements’ by Siamese is released on 9th August on Long Branch Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
