Listening to Still In Love’s debut record Recovery Language feels like time-travelling. Not to too distant a past, but so specific a moment that all my early-teen show memories came flooding back: pre-ordering CDs that came with a t-shirt three months late (if you were lucky), feeling happy enough to join the push-push at Kentish Town Forum yet still too scrawny to head to the rowdy side of the pillar at Underworld. God I’m old. Then again, ageing has a knack of bringing about great things, just like the collected experience put into this piece.
Even before a listen of any Still In Love material, a rush of “where did this sort of thing go?” happened discovering former Dead Swans vocalist Nick Worthington was at the helm: serious Bridge Nine alumni that existed in a sadly short-lived roster when UK metalcore gained muster. Then more clues started falling into place; single Preserve & Cherish not only brings Architects’ Sam Carter into the fold—scenesters that grew very much out of grotty basement venues pretty sharpish—but packs a shoutout to Worthington’s first band Turns Cold in its larger-than-life atmospheric chugged outro. The octave chords are chunky, clearly the “melodic hardcore with bite” that a No Echo article claimed before peeling back more layers to reveal Still In Love’s members from Brutality Will Prevail, Throats, the pre-ascendant Bring Me The Horizon days and, to my most personal surprise, Last Witness. There’s a whole other article in Last Witness’ committed support slots at London venues back in the day and how their low brawny tunings could rival a colonoscopy, but we’ll leave that for another time.
Recovery Language brings the sounds that defined Britain’s heavy underground with the modern production that is, for want of a better word, meaty. Just tightly-packed slabs of emotional hardcore. It doesn’t re-invent its rulebook, but shares such characteristics with missed bands that it feels a long-awaited homecoming for an entire genre. For instance, there was a time every album would kick off with the sub two-minute breakdown jam constructed purely to hype the live show (hello XO by Your Demise), and Tell The Truth does exactly so, with Worthington’s callout “Your trauma will find you!” nailing the landing of an effective heart-jab.
His throaty shouts sound excellent on The State Of Things to Come, granting the players room to breathe amongst the crushing tones and blastbeats of Nervous Impulse, or the slammy shades of Inherit where the drummer goes utterly ham everywhere. There’s the song for the mid-tempo headbob part of a setlist (you know the one) with a spot from another member of hardcore royalty—Andrew Fisher of Basement—and the finale Pillar Of Strength dabbled with other elements: an introduction similar to Behemoth, a buzzing bass tone that follows through all the way to a final chug-and-ringing lead breakdown finale, and a clean mid-section that’s so utterly late ‘00s that I can’t put my finger on it. It’s… a rainy autumnal day on a National Rail train? Does that work?
There’s a lot of intangible elements to Recovery Language that’ll strike anyone who was fortunate enough to check out these acts in the salad days, yet enough blood, sweat and expert pit-mongering to feed the next generation who we can see propping up a resurgence of brilliant hard-hitting British music. Thanks for all the good times, gang, and thanks for what’s hopefully about to come.
For fans of: The Ghost Of A Thousand, Have Heart, Architects
‘Recovery Language’ by Still In Love is released on 5th September on Church Road Records.
Words by Elliot Burr
