This Will Destroy You – Moving On The Edges Of Things (Magic Bullet Records)
A sizable number of people thought that they had This Will Destroy You pegged. Devotees of effects-pedal happy instrumental rock bands considered them the second coming of Explosions In The Sky. Those less inclined towards crescendo-heavy post-rock thought pretty much the same thing, only without meaning the comparison as a compliment. Evangelical Christian groups also latched onto This Will Destroy You, using their music in a variety of Christian propaganda in spite of the band’s lack of religious affiliation and without contacting them for permission or compensation. All these people had This Will Destroy You filed away in a comfortable niche, but with their most recent release the band proves all of them wrong.
Previous albums like Young Mountain and their self-titled second album were fairly standard entries into the instrumental post-rock canon – introspective, slow-paced, full of quiet-to-loud build ups. Nothing terribly unpleasant, but nothing terribly original either – a criticism which could just as easily be directed towards the majority of the genre itself, characterized as it so often is by even its best practitioners rarely straying from a formulaic approach. But while it was difficult not to immediately compare the band’s earlier releases with a handful of more popular bands working along similar lines, it is difficult to come up with any individual reference point with which to compare their most recent release.
This Will Destroy You – Moving On The Edges Of Things (Magic Bullet Records)
A sizable number of people thought that they had This Will Destroy You pegged. Devotees of effects-pedal happy instrumental rock bands considered them the second coming of Explosions In The Sky. Those less inclined towards crescendo-heavy post-rock thought pretty much the same thing, only without meaning the comparison as a compliment. Evangelical Christian groups also latched onto This Will Destroy You, using their music in a variety of Christian propaganda in spite of the band’s lack of religious affiliation and without contacting them for permission or compensation. All these people had This Will Destroy You filed away in a comfortable niche, but with their most recent release the band proves all of them wrong.
Previous albums like Young Mountain and their self-titled second album were fairly standard entries into the instrumental post-rock canon – introspective, slow-paced, full of quiet-to-loud build ups. Nothing terribly unpleasant, but nothing terribly original either – a criticism which could just as easily be directed towards the majority of the genre itself, characterized as it so often is by even its best practitioners rarely straying from a formulaic approach. But while it was difficult not to immediately compare the band’s earlier releases with a handful of more popular bands working along similar lines, it is difficult to come up with any individual reference point with which to compare their most recent release.
The album’s two sprawling compositions, “Rituals” and “Woven Tears” both possess a hazy darkness, burying ominous minor key melodies under layers of noise like a distant radio transmission being ripped apart by the static between stations. Drums pound forlornly in the background, distant and loping, acting less as a central rhythmic device than as another slightly muffled counterpoint to the indistinct smears of sound at the songs’ forefront. While not remotely as twisted or sinister as the record label’s promotional materials make the album out to be – it seems neither like a “portal to hell” nor “your turntable eating itself” – the songs linger in a netherworld between the malevolent darkness suggested by such descriptions and a gentler ambient drift. Tim Hecker’s more recent albums are somewhat comparable, as his work leans towards the contrapuntal juxtaposition of consonance and dissonance. The quieter, calm-before-the-storm moments of forward-thinking metal bands like Wolves In The Throne Room or Twilight also come to mind, except that, unlike those bands – or This Will Destroy You’s previous work for that matter – Moving On The Edges Of Things doesn’t really attempt to go anywhere. The irony is that through this recent development in their sound, the band has achieved more of a sonic stasis than ever before, but the singularity of their sound allows for a better-developed meditation on individual elements which previously had taken a back seat to the dualism of their soft-loud dynamic and makes for a far more compelling listen.
Any listeners who considered This Will Destroy You’s previous albums too facile or too indistinct from their contemporaries would be well-advised to give Moving On The Edges Of Things a chance. Any fans of the band’s older albums should at least give it a shot, albeit with the understanding that it is not an exercise in the easy-listening instrumental work for which the band is best known. And for those Christian youth groups out there who want a little background music for their inspirational video, this album will be about as much use to you as Anton LaVey covering
Slayer on Liberace’s piano.
