Sometimes, being angry can be twinned with spurious bouts of negativity that usually erupts in violence. Thankfully, You Judas have taken such vitriol and annoyance as an energy to create one of the most enthralling records of the year.
'Discover Mutiny' is the fruits of a band who've spent two years honing their art to perfection, no doubt aided and abetted by numerous crises and conflicts both personal and general. As a statement of their true intentions and feelings - gut instinct is merely a whim in You Judas' parallel sanctity of a universe - 'Discover Mutiny' furrages the dark alleyways Thom Yorke read about in Robert McCammon's works from the early eighties. It's a dark, languid trawl through spacious prog (not post) rock terrains via stoned, thunderous riffs that even the genial Tony Iommi would gawp at in amazement, such are their ferocious brow-beating incredulity.
Take the post-hardcore meltdown of 'Rolling In The Blood Of Strangers' for example, which sounds like the ashes of Therapy? being scattered through a 30 year long reverberating time machine, or 'Rats With Wings', undoubtedly the kind of record 'St. Anger' would have been if Hetfield and co. had been listening to 'Mogwai vs. Satan' rather the regurgitated musings of a certain prince of darkness.
Some parts of the record drifts into the same spacious vacuum that Radiohead tried to navigate with 'Hail To The Thief' ('One Day Your Money Will Mean Nothing' and the title track itself), others give fake plastic rockers like Queens Of The Stone Age a run for their money, the non-stop psychodrama of 'Entropy' briefly coming up for air only at it's outset and swift conclusion.
If 'Discover Mutiny' is the last word in epic, post-progressive hardcore, then maybe the meandering skits of messrs Waters and Wakeman weren't in vain after all.
'Discover Mutiny' then - as angry as it's possible to be without physically assaulting someone.
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8Dom Gourlay's Score