ALBUM REVIEW: Blue City – Abrams
Surrounded by the Rocky Mountains and boasting a diverse and eclectic music scene, Denver – consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado – is a breathtakingly inspiring place for music. Emerging from its often neglected rock and metal underground in 2013, ABRAMS have been constantly evolving their sound to be in your face with bombastic riffs and stuck in your head with infectious vocal melodies. The band have become known for their eclectic influences ranging from progressive sludge and post-hardcore to shoegaze and heavy psych. Their fifth album, Blue City, sees the quartet reach a new pinnacle of their creative abilities, crafting a stunning record that hits your with the force of a freight train.
Following up 2022’s In The Dark – an album that featured in many end of year lists and hailed as the most bombastic and explosive version of ABRAMS to date – would be no mean feat. With the bar set incredibly high and expectations raised, you were left thinking to yourself, “How could they possibly top this?”. ABRAMS didn’t let the weight of expectation dampen their creativity or affect their songwriting, and now they unleash the highly anticipated follow-up Blue City.
Just like its predecessor, Blue City is a wall of intricate sounds layered to create cinematic atmospheres. More accurately, the album is the converging point between genre-defying heaviness, anthemic vocal melodies and contemplative psychedelia. It explores the thoughts, emotions and hardships surrounding the feeling of being stuck in your comfort zone but too scared of change, with the album’s title being a metaphor for a cold but ultimately familiar place that keeps you imprisoned and running away from any drastically new experience that comes to you. This is captured perfectly in the album’s turbulence; from start to finish you can feel the pain of being in two minds between familiarity and unfamiliarity, alongside the crushing weight of a decision that causes extreme anxiety when you think about it.
ABRAMS have doubled down on the sound that they established on In The Dark but have injected it with a grungy melancholy that elevates their guitar melodies and captivating vocals. Blue City is emotionally raw, its theme feels like it is being sung by someone with experience of this struggle, and as a result the album carries a significant emotional weight. Musically, Blue City is ABRAMS at their absolute best, every note has purpose and is delivered with a pinpoint precision. The band’s performance throughout the album is incredibly tight while it overflows with emotion.
Blue City also has its own distinct character. Where In The Dark was an intense and brooding journey detailing the angers, fears, frustrations and sparse joys of living in a world that seems adamant in oppressing you, Blue City contains all of those emotions but observes them from a distance – calmer yet more melancholic. There’s also a sense of despair that because you’ve wasted so much time there’s no point in leaving the comfort of misery because those opportunities to break free won’t come again. It’s something that many of us have probably gone through in our life, making it an intensely relatable album.
Opening up with Tomorrow, the album gets straight to the meat and bones of the matter. A fast, fuzz-drenched guitar riff explodes into a frantic barrage of pummelling drums and bruising grooves. This is followed by Fire Waltz, which follows a similar formula to Tomorrow but utilises the band’s innate ability to shift up the dynamics with ease, transitioning from panic stricken verses to anthemic choruses. Etherol demonstrates the band’s shoegazey, atmospheric leanings; spacious and dizzyingly psychedelic, it feels like a brief moment of strangely dissonant stability in a mostly frantic flurry of riffs. Lungfish lean further into shoegaze with luscious reverbs, chorus and delay effects carrying the vocals melodies through a melancholic space.
Wasting Time has a plethora of exciting intertwined guitar melodies that drive the song forward whilst the vocals capture the fear of venturing into the unfamiliar. Death Om is reminiscent of the tracks on In The Dark; rage-filled and angry, you can feel the tension throughout the track as it explores the depression associated with this situation. Turn It Off and Narc are two of the more atmospheric tracks on the album, distant and melancholic, the slower tempos giving you a chance to sit and reflect. Crack Aunt has an eerie and tense groove about it but the highlight of this song is the bluesy feel and old school rock guitar leads. Blue City closes and consolidates the album with big riffs and ethereal vocals that feel like the final release of these melancholic emotions.
ABRAMS are starting to cement themselves as one of the most musically diverse and emotionally impactful bands in the scene. Blue City is an absolute triumph and stays with you long after the final riff.
Rating: 10/10
Blue City is set for release on May 24th via Blues Funeral Recordings.
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