Review Summary: One of the better heavy albums of the year so far.
It’s hard to imagine a better follow-up album than Gaza’s second full-length, as
He is Never Coming Back improves on basically every aspect of its predecessor, and then some. Uncompromisingly heavy,
HINCB is a headtrip of riffs and breakdowns, continuing along
I Don’t Care Where I Go When I Die’s path of sludgy-metalcore goodness while embellishing on and enhancing every characteristic of their sound.
Such as “The Meat of a Leg Joint” and “Tombless”, which has one of the best riffs you’ll hear all year, embellish out the band’s more straightforward metalcore sound, “The Astronomer” and the title track focus more on the band’s sludgier side. When Gaza mixes these styles successfully---and they’re pretty much always successful at this---is when s
hit gets real interesting. For example, see “Canine Disposal Unit”, an epic that alternates from speedy riffing to total crushing brutality, which also features vocalist Jon Parkin’s all-encompassing roar at its most disgusting and at its most totally awesome.
HISNCB has two main surprises. One is the rather unforeseen versatility of the songs, which never seem to end anywhere near where they started; the constant progression of different riffs and sections give some songs a slight math-y or even a progressive feel. Another surprise are the songs “The Biologist” and “The Anthropologist”, which are two brief softer pieces that offer a welcome reprieve from the total heaviness found everywhere else on the album. “The Anthropologist” is the most impressive: it shows Gaza can easily pull of the kind of pu
ssy post-rock that underfed college dweebs live off nowadays.
HINCB breezes by; its thirty-five minutes seem to last half that. But you won’t just spend thirty-five minutes with this album; you’ll spend hours---it’s that compulsively listenable. Just get it already.
