On their second album I Let It In and It Took Everything, the Liverpudlian band Loathe probe the connection between heavy music and ambient, intertwining prog-metal breakdowns with sweeping synthesizers and shoegaze textures. In the same way Deafheaven’s Sunbather served as an effective entry point to black metal for the uninitiated, this album expands the borders of what a metalcore band can sound like, and they do it while writing evocative choruses and fierce breakdowns in equal measure.
Loathe have greatly evolved from the aspirational yet occasionally timid metalcore band they were on their 2017 debut The Cold Sun. Now, nothing is off-limits, from the sample of a Nina Simone interview on the ambient interlude “451 Days” to the catchy nu-metal sludge of “Screaming.” When “New Faces In the Dark” makes an abrupt left turn from a Smiths-style guitar lick to feedback spirals and djent-y riffs, the contrast hits like a fist to the jaw. On “A Sad Cartoon,” they even channel early-’00s emo, juggling clean-toned guitars and dueling vocals. Deftones diehards will immediately spot the influence of Chino Moreno’s lovesick vocals on lead vocalist Kadeem France—Moreno counts himself a fan of the band—while guitarists Erik Bickerstaffe and Connor Sweeney tap into both the sweeping magnificence of Slowdive and the visceral pulse of more extreme groups like Meshuggah.
They balance all of these competing influences with meticulous precision; on “Broken Vision Rhythm,” drummer Sean Radcliffe stuffs a miniature history of prog drumming into a song that doesn’t even crack three minutes. It’s immediately followed by the gauzy epic “Two-Way Mirror,” Loathe’s closest thing to a potential crossover hit. Bickerstaffe is hardly the first metal musician to use (or abuse) the lower tones of a baritone guitar, but he’s able to conjure titanic slabs of distortion that never sound overwrought.
The members of Loathe have bonafides in the UK underground metal scene, having come up in various Liverpool bands before they started playing together in 2014. But the songwriting throughout I Let It In hints at a band more focused on bringing new fans into the fold than appeasing old ones. During a recent interview discussing “Red Room” and “Gored”—two of the more aggressive tracks here, which see France dig deep into his larynx for guttural, inhuman tones—the frontman touched on the all-encompassing ambition of their new record. “If it comes naturally to us, we want to do it,” he said.
In the past, France has referred to Loathe as a collective—a single unit defined by their shared passion, and not their instruments. The songs bear out this ideology; France might handle most of the screaming and singing in Loathe, but he and Bickerstaffe trade off clean vocals for certain songs. The two have similar enough timbres that they can blend effortlessly. Harmonizing at the apex of “Two-Way Mirror,” they put a human stamp on the surrounding walls of distortion, grounding themselves to a shared emotional bond that transcends genre.
