ALBUM REVIEW: Midnight Heavyweight – InTechnicolour
The inventive and technically gifted quartet that make up Brighton’s INTECHNICOLOUR create music that blurs the lines between the behind the beat desert grooves of stoner music and the dynamic, deeply satisfying riffing first pioneered by the likes of MASTODON and BARONESS. An eclectic mix of influences provides the sturdy backbone for colourful yet grungy songwriting. Following up on the successes of their debut full-length Big Sleeper in 2020, INTECHNICOLOUR’s sophomore album Midnight Heavyweight maintains the sludgy riffs and desert atmospheres but showcases a new level of maturity and compositional skill. With a strong emphasis and focus on delicious vocal harmony, interweaving melodies, subtle dynamic shifts and big, juicy hooks, Midnight Heavyweight is a tasty set of songs for you to sink your teeth into.
Not afraid to write incredibly colourful songs, INTECHNICOLOUR are becoming the masters of creating music that feels like synaesthesia. When listening to their intensely catchy hooks and riffs through their slightly broken amps, you experience the delights of tasting the colour of your emotions. Whilst the lyrical content documents the unsettling and unprecedented emotions that we all felt during the pandemic, Midnight Heavyweight is easily the most vivid expression of those emotions in musical form to date. With luxurious vocal melodies and harmonies creating vivid, spiralling colour mood boards in your mind, you feel every part of this album. With fear, anxiety, hope, love and sadness bleeding into the album’s core, you can feel yourself resonating with vast swathes of this album on deeper, instinctual levels. Compared to Big Sleeper, the songs presented to us on Midnight Heavyweight come from a much more reflective place, and with that in mind this can be perceived as a deeply introspective album. Even so, this demonstrates the new level of maturity and creative emotional processing in INTECHNICOLOUR’s songwriting, making the album lucid and incredibly dynamic.
The grungy vibe that transcends the album alongside the shoegazey psychedelic elements is reminiscent of American band SUPERHEAVEN, yet INTECHNICOLOUR do it with more subtlety and delicacy. Every song feels like a moment in time; with each pounding kick drum comes a gut punch to the emotions, as waves upon waves of emotion flood over you as Tobie Anderson seemingly sings directly to your heart and soul. Even though there is an intense passion and emotion to the album, there is also an eeriness to it – as though you are walking through a city’s streets at night, under the orange glow of street lamps and the red and white blurs of vehicles piercing your peripheral vision. Neon signs flash in obnoxious splendour and you are left wandering around lost in your own little world with the band’s soaring harmonies providing an epic soundtrack. There is a perfect balance between loud riffing and delicate, sombre moments.
Opening up the album with the tense, eerie Bloodmoonshine, you instantly notice that this is a very different feeling album, yet it is still packed with deeply satisfying riffs and brilliantly frantic. The song sets the tone for the album, as it leads into The Wave, which captures the imagination as it’s lead by a strong, driving beat. A mixture between MASTODON and BARONESS, there is quirkiness to The Wave, with anthemic chorus moments sandwiched between gritty, staccato riffs. Tokyo Dream slows the album down, and settles into a gentle groove as ballad-like lyrics are dispatched by Anderson. This first segment of the album contains the interlude Wake Up Dead Man, a brief yet hauntingly beautiful piece that allows you to just stop and really take the breathtaking elegance this album has. It leads into the most thought provoking song on the album, Corner Of Time In The World, which opens with slow SOUNDGARDEN-esque melodies complete with chorus and reverb effects before crescendoing into Turn It Loose.
Turn It Loose brings the energy back up with a grungy anthem, and sets the tone for the second half of the album. As it fades out, a massive punch from the drums on the title track catches you off guard; big sludgy riffs accompanied by luscious atmospherics lull you into a dream state. Remember Not To Forget is another short interlude that gives you a moment to catch your breath and reflect, ringing distorted chords fade as the layers of harmonics build. Fever Queen has a similar sound and format to the title track. Making Friends With Shadows starts off eerie and jangly before gut punching you with a mighty sludge riff made epic with the vocal harmonies. Eastman closes the album in emphatic fashion, slowly building before raining down the blows with chunky riffing and impassioned vocals.
INTECHNICOLOUR have created a stunning album that is hard to pin down. Brilliantly colourful and thought provoking, you can’t help but feel completely moved by these songs.
Rating: 9/10
Midnight Heavyweight is set for release on November 4th via Small Pond.
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