EP REVIEW: God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys – The Callous Daoboys
THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS were 2022’s most unlikely success story; the Atlanta septet erupted with second album Celebrity Therapist, smashing together mathcore and seemingly whatever else they could get their hands on to push the genre’s boundaries to breaking point. Its maniacal, spasmodic nature caught on, thanks to the DAOBOYS’ ability to not only write utterly mental music, but stuff it with genuine hooks. In a whirlwind year packed with tours around the world with some of the best mosh calls (notably, “show me how free your healthcare is” at ArcTanGent and Radar festivals), they’ve somehow found time to write more new music.
Enter God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys, a sort of self-titled effort that, in just three songs and 13 minutes, upends mathcore and stuffs even more reference points into it with gleeful abandon. It somehow sounds all the more unhinged when songs actually repeat parts now, with identifiable choruses or recurring motifs amidst the mayhem, and is arguably the most out-there, brilliant thing they’ve created – so far. The three songs show the same DAOBOYS fans love from both Die On Mars and its quantum leap forward follow-up Celebrity Therapist, but there’s some even bigger surprises in store from a band who’ve made it their stock in trade
Pushing The Pink Envelope opens with ten seconds of ambience before seesawing violin bursts forth, backed by furious guitar and punctuated by Carson Pace’s madcap rambling screams. Then there’s a bossa nova break that ends with Pace singing “so if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just get fucked instead”. So far, so incredibly DAOBOYS but that bossa nova break is fresh; where Star Baby flirted with jazz-pop at its close, Pushing The Pink Envelope fuses it all together, with an honest-to-God chorus the band even repeat throughout before the track collapses in a distorted scream.
In fact, that fusion is something the band do adeptly throughout the three songs. Waco Jesus, the first single released back in August, has a grooving riff and callbacks to Star Baby with its lyrics (“When I see a star in my search history / I can’t breathe / A star for Star Baby”). It’s easily the catchiest song they’ve written to date, eschewing a little of the mania for a more straightforward structure with, again, a repeating chorus that’ll get stuck in your head for days. At this point, they’ve already put together the best EP of the year – and there’s still one track left.
Speaking of, it all comes to a head with the brilliantly-titled (as they all are) Designer Shroud Of Turin that features the talents of post-hardcore outfit PULSES.. It feels like the natural conclusion not only of the EP, but to where the DAOBOYS have been building up until now. The frantic mathcore is present and correct, of course, the guitars veering from fret-busting acrobatics to churning riffs, while the chorus offers brief melodic respite. Its true beauty though, lies in fusing that with brief flourishes of beatdown and a salsa break with saxophone.
None of this should work together – but it does, because THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS have such a tight handle on their songwriting, and an unshakeable belief in the brilliance of absurdity. In other words, God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys is a striking leap forward, blending nu-jazz, salsa, bossa nova, mathcore, death metal and whatever else they fancy into something that is not only a bold evolution on an already excellent foundation, but shows that with this as a springboard, album three might just redefine the entire genre. Again.
Rating: 9/10
God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys is set for release on October 20th via MNRK Heavy/Modern Static Records.
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