REVIEW ROUND-UP: Delights, blacktoothed, State Of You

Delights

If Heaven Looks A Little Like This

If you’ve previously heard of Delights, it’d likely be part of a metro-festival lineup surrounded by a litany of indie bands fed through the lens of Britpop by way of a ‘60s pop shuffle. It’s hardly unfamiliar for northern up-and-comers whose regional scenes are still lousy with that precise archetype. Hell, beneath their own accoutrements, it’s what Delights themselves are like. Put Adam Maxwell and his indie-lad voice—and a good deal of the songwriting, too—among the more ‘normal’ sound palette of Silk Skin and Say What’s On Your Mind, and what changes?

Fortunately for what might appear a rather lukewarm opening pair, If Heaven Looks A Little Like This is quick to illustrate what makes Delights tick. They might get subsumed when you remove those aforementioned accoutrements, but they’re a pretty significant component to the whole picture. Here, Delights bring infusions of psych-pop and soft disco, not only varnishing a sound that can often be unflatteringly rough at the surface, but just being a bit more colourful as a whole. Where the likes of Soft Top and I Think You Should Know aren’t exactly rich, they’re also not so sterile to blank the tangible efforts made towards groove and swirl. The two-parter Hotel Lobby and Hotel Bar serve as the most noteworthy examples, as Delights’ cribbing from Tame Impala arrives at its most suave, smooth outcome.

It’s eternally listenable stuff, if a bit long for what it is and its lax pace. Tremendous shocks and mile-a-minute rushes are decidedly not what this album is about, and slimming it down a tad would be to the benefit of that. Nevertheless, the vibe is rarely compromised. A listenable, approachable album enamoured with life in a band is the kind of mid-range bar that Delights can clear with no hassle. It’s what their musical oeuvre is built for, at the end of the day, and if there’s one thing to celebrate If Heaven Looks A Little Like This for, it’s that. Ephemeral as it can sometimes be, it’s never unpleasant or unwelcome to have on, even if it is sticking further to the background.

Still, with what they’ve got, there’s less chance of losing Delights in the almighty shuffle than for great swathes of their contemporaries. At least there’s a different feel here, one that’s not grounded in heard-it-all-before ennui. And for a band who also barely have a single idea of their own to speak of, that’s not bad going. The challenge for Delights will be making waves outside of their gated, mid-level indie scene, where there’s not the automatic promise of adulation for being marginally different. They could probably get somewhere, though. An inviting pop album isn’t something that most people would just turn away.

For fans of: Tame Impala, SPINN, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me

‘If Heaven Looks A Little Like This’ by Delights is out now on Modern Sky Records.

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blacktoothed

Headway

Three albums in, and blacktoothed’s defining trait remains that they’re signed to Arising Empire but aren’t a metalcore band. And it’s not like that gives them greater leeway, either. They’ve similarly been attenuated by whatever personality-muting parasite the label seems to expose its signees to as soon as pen hits paper. Any differences that could arise from this being a hard rock outfit are rendered void when—as per—their work is chronically without colour or flavour. There’s a morsel of hope when Headway’s opener Get Me Down seems determined to force out a Black Stone Cherry riff, but it’s not to last. Oh God, is it not to last!

At least Hendrik Rathgeber has become a better singer, a far cry from their debut Seeker and its sub-par David Draiman impression. Now, he’s more label-standard, aided by Matti Keitel for a bit of diversity in tone. Not that that amounts to a great deal outside of hooks which, to be fair, are blacktoothed’s most reliable tool, here more than ever. On a roll of radio-rock wallpaper, the likes of True Colours and Fight would fit right in, maybe even catch an ear or two at the right time. Admittedly that’s pushing it, but hey, blacktoothed need all the help they can get, clearly. They aren’t doing it for themselves when they’re tied to heaving, gallumphing clatter as a way to sound ‘big’ and ‘epic’, when in reality, it only highlights how bricked and washed-out a song like Novocaine is.

It reaches its absolute worst on Time Bomb, not just from how the robo-rock gearshift yanks the vocals through horrid AutoTune blocks, but for how prevalent the ticks and whirrs sound during the breakdown, for the subconscious idea that blacktoothed are struggling under their own weight to get this all into place. The rest of Headway might not be so on-the-nose with that, but you certainly see it. The bleached production glaze simultaneously hides imperfections and makes the whole enterprise feel that much more mechanical. There also appears to be an emphasis on avoiding anything too heavy, likely why the screamed portions on Hell’s Paradise and Time Bomb are so brief. There’s a window of pre-approved metal space that blacktoothed are allowed to occupy, and the fact they do so this proficiently is likely why they’re underwhelming in almost every aspect.

What’s worse is that Headway is probably their best album, by virtue of doing one or two things in a way that, from the correct angle, if you squint at them, could be deemed as ‘right’. Otherwise, they’re just another name to be sucked into the homogenous Arising Empire miasma, genre discrepancies be damned. That probably says more about the label and their need for a new quality control policy, but blacktoothed themselves aren’t absolved either. Headway is still a deeply bland, cold, impersonal listen, palpably failing to feel as important as it wants to be. It also adds barely anything to a repertoire already starved of nutritional value in its creative beats, so no points there, either.

For fans of: Asking Alexandria, Starset, Skillet

‘Headway’ by blacktoothed is released on 24th January on Arising Empire.

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State Of You

On A Knife’s Edge

This is State Of You’s second EP, which is one more than these ventures usually get to while remaining even a bit noteworthy. Often, it’d be highlighted how they’re comprised of a bunch of UK hardcore also-rans, and then be left to bounce when interest beyond that cursory factoid just isn’t there. So…congrats for breaking type, then? It’s a little mean to highlight, sure, but the fact we’re here at all suggests that foundations laid by Polar and Hildamay aren’t the be-all and end-all of State Of You’s identity. In their own right, they can be a pretty killer little post-hardcore band.

What’s impressive within that is how there hasn’t been a great deal of revamping necessary to get to that. On A Knife’s Edge pretty much holds true to the feel of Cancer Bats or Every Time I Die filtered through 2010s Brit-core, albeit, this time, with the melody emphasised. Double Barelled even tightens itself further into an uptempo punk hook, borderline unadulterated Britrock in its selection of tones. The good thing is that it doesn’t undercut the tension and release that State Of You are mostly about. Steve Sitkowski’s vocals are maybe more shredding than even, the ideal vehicle for espousing feelings of societal pressure on Cut The Rope, or subverting rockstar debauchery on To The Core.

The music itself seems to also have undergone a tune-up. Gone is an indeterminable ‘side-project’ aura that bands like this sometimes boast, in favour of a hearty, heavy roar that’s deep in producer Oz Craggs’ wheelhouse. State Of You were always more competent on that front to begin with, but you can still clock the difference on On A Knife’s Edge. It’s bigger and brawnier, in feel if not entirely through new tactics to get it there. Guitars have a firmer slam to them, concentrated into a quasi-Beartooth tautness on To The Core and Two Of A Kind, while conversely embracing the spaciousness of peak While She Sleeps on Under The Wire.

In essence, it’s a lot like what State Of You were doing before—right down to not having a whole lot to discuss—but bigger, stronger and just as consistent in its vision. On A Knife’s Edge is another six-song affair without an obvious lowlight or stumble, which amounts to a lot considering how short a shelf-life acts like this can have. It helps that State Of You are simply a better version of the template, but provably inching towards some longevity with real returns is definitely a good sign. The uncharted waters of EP3 might even be on the horizon at this rate.

For fans of: Cancer Bats, Beartooth, While She Sleeps

‘On A Knife’s Edge’ by State Of You is released on 24th January on Silent Cult.

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Words by Luke Nuttall