ALBUM REVIEW: No Good To Anyone – Today Is The Day
For nearly thirty years, Steve Austin has been the underground-metal-musician’s underground-metal-musician. His work with (or rather, as) TODAY IS THE DAY has seen him forge a path all his own – blending elements from innumerate genres into a caustic, venomous psych-noise barrage. No Good To Anyone marks the band’s eleventh full-length release, and their first album in six years as well as released on new label BMG. Although this may be ‘all change’, the core of TODAY IS THE DAY’s sound is, as ever, raw, experimental, and uncompromising. The album, to an extent, deals with Austin’s physical battles with surgery and illness, and fittingly the record is a physical thing – something to be contended with and worked through, mind and body.
The title track opens with rumbling, fuzzed out riffs and needle sharp guitar, drawled spoken word dripping with languid malice. Brooding, thick bass wanders through hefty, meditative repetition before taking a hard left into screeched vocals and layers of noise. Bass moves through subsonic, infra-sound frequencies as a snarling riff bears its teeth. “The madness you’re feeling is all in your mind!” Austin mutters, preparing the listener for the tracks to come.
Attacked By an Angel rolls slow and syrupy, vocals out of sync with the main riff and buoyed haphazardly upon it. A steady, palm muted groove develops into stabbing, jarring guitars over bristling drums. Son of Man lurches with a predatory, stalking riff – stripped back and direct before spiralling into a dizzying synth waltz. Burn In Hell kicks hard into a retro, ballsy swagger, kept lean ‘n’ mean throughout with it’s MELVINS-ian sludgy groove, before taking a tumble into a breathless, atonal squall. You’re All Gonna Die is infectious, a buzzing groove and spaced-out, echoing vocals shot through with stuttering kicks and rabid bursts of electronic chaos. Cocobolo is sultry, whispered vocals and a moody bass line sudden exploding into mid-paced sludge.
Agate is a brief caesura of stop/start noise loop. Callie is all lush, dreamy guitar strums and splashing cymbals, warm and bright with breathy, light vocals. OJ Kush clatters, lurches and stutters, mutating metallically. Mercy thumps along with swinging riffs and rapid drumming, shrieked vocals like the spittle-flecked diatribe of a serial killer. Born In Blood drones with intoned vocal layers, cut through with sharp guitars. Languid with repetition, reeling riff to whining riff, it moulds into layers of creeping, uncomfortable noise like a horror film soundtrack. Mexico blooms space-ward with a hypnotically swaying riff, impossible to resist with its looping, shifting riffs. Closer Rockets and Dreams begins with back-masked acoustics and tolling bells, crushed under the weight of oppressive, growling synths and a slow drum build. Rising in a wash of electronic noise, it moves and pulses before ending on an off-kilter snatch of the Star Spangled Banner climax.
No Good To Anyone sees TODAY IS THE DAY‘s work as sharp as ever. Treading the fine line between playful experimentation, spiteful heaving heaviness and near chaos at all times, it’s a challenging, changing record that might not be good to everyone, but it doesn’t need to be.
Rating: 7/10
No Good To Anyone is out now via BMG.
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