Review Summary: knocked wiin
For a band with two decently well-received full length records under their belt, there’s an almost strange amount of hype behind the Knocked Loose of 2024.
Almost, because their hauntingly excellent EP
A Tear in the Fabric of Life, ridiculously intense live performances and overall likeable demeanour as a band
of people make the hype well-earned. As such, the fresh
You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To comes with, oh god oh fuck, expectations. Expectations are scary, but Knocked Loose are scarier: rather than audibly engaging with questions along the lines of “
is it doing the heavy heavier than the last heavy” and “
are the one-liners smart enough to stand out but dumb enough for sweaty dudes to remember in the pit”, the band simply throw everything they know at whatever’s in the walls in hopes of it demolishing the entire fucking structure.
In essence,
You Won’t Go… does what it needs to do and then shuts the hell up. It heavies heavily: look no further than the so-ridiculous-it-rips “
bend the knee / son of god / uuuuuuuggghhh” breakdown in lead single “Blinding Faith” or the absolute insanity of “Moss Covers All”. Other songs conjure some ghosts or demons and stuff by way of an eerie buzzing motif and samples that maintain the unsurprisingly oppressive tone of the record - the dissonant web woven by “Take Me Home”s creatively odd and oddly creative twists forms a clear highlight as it makes way for the next slice of insanity. Most strikingly, the record embodies the most abrasive
and the most dynamic music put to record by Knocked Loose: in spite of the near constant sonic onslaught, riffs are given ample space to
groove, and each lyric is delivered with unmatched levels of spite as other band members chip in to complement Bryan Garris’ trademark high-pitched anguish with different shades of vocals. Speaking of diverse vocals: Poppy’s guest spot on “Suffocate” is vicious, hard-hitting, and easily the best thing she’s done since
EAT, while Chris Motionless provides some vocals to “Slaughterhouse 2” that neither elevate nor damage the track’s intensities.
But yeah, fine, let’s address some of those damn
expectations and do the discourse. Firstly,
You Won’t Go… isn’t quite as impressive as 2021’s
A Tear in the Fabric of Life: it does not achieve the same level of darkness through its storytelling, nor does it aim to do so. Instead, this album is 27 minutes of unhinged carnage, and allows no time for its creative decisions to be evaluated while it’s assaulting your ears and brain and limbs. However, once it’s all said and screm’d, it does beg the question whether this approach would have been a better fit for the EP format while
A Tear…’s narrative ambitions could have benefitted from a more expansive mould. Secondly, the aforementioned “Take Me Home” and closing cut “Sit & Mourn'' show that Knocked Loose are capable of expressing themselves in different fonts of intensity too - the latter even dabbles in post-black-and-etcetera-isms - but unfortunately this experimentation is somewhat limited on
You Won’t Go…. Sure, it seems unreasonable to expect the band most well-known for “
ARF ARF” to go all-out in terms of ambitious songwriting, but that’s what
expectations will do to you.
Regardless, Knocked Loose are really good, nah,
the absolute best at writing stupidly heavy songs and forcing the catchy into the intense rather than the other way around. This album destroys as much as possible while it’s on, and even if it leaves a little to be desired once it’s over (damn expectations!), it doesn’t seem to give a fuck about what you think. Honestly, fair enough.
