W**ant, the previous record from California duo Wreck and Reference, was a metal record at war with metal’s allergies to adaptation. Felix Skinner’s sampler and Ignat Frege’s drumming made bare piano as sharp as any HM-2-blasted riff, and Skinner weaponized existential dread with his commanding vocal performance. By stripping away the most sacred of basics, they opened up new avenues for extreme music. They fit into the modern metal landscape that seeks to redefine itself, even if they don't necessarily see themselves as metal. If Want was a blueprint for a metal world without guitar, its followup Indifferent Rivers Romance End is that world with developed architecture and landscaping, their songcraft finally catching up to their uncompromising gloom.
Wreck and Reference are nowhere near synth-pop, but Indifferent shows that they think like a smart synth-pop group: using electronic layers as tools to advance compositions, not textural ends in and of themselves. This isn’t an uplifting record by any means, but it also feels less dim, illuminating Skinner and Frege’s mutual anxieties and uncovering diversity in the process. At the end of “Flight but Not Metaphor,” there's a thudding bass drum, like your heartsickness is the most exclusive club in town. It’s a small and sly incorporation of dance music, unburdened by the try-hard aesthetics of, say, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix grafting electronic and hip-hop onto metal. Increased attention to detail translates in even in their most aggressive songs, with “Ascend” given a goth funeral via huge synth horns and “Languish” driven by flickering strings.
Skinner has come into his own as a vocalist, relying more on his croon than his scream throughout Indifferent. His voice hasn’t changed much, but his confidence in expressing the lack thereof has never been better. Skinner's growth is none more apparent than on opener “Powders,” Wreck and Reference’s take on a confessional piano ballad that just might be their defining song. It’s more of an argument ballad, really—he narrates a bickering couple’s ongoing resentments, a cycle of seemingly mundane but ultimately serious questions without answers: “And you said what about the powders? And I said what about the fluids? And you said what about the cowards? And I said what about me, what are you trying to say?” Frege’s snare roll after the first verse triggers Skinner into full-on hysteria, and even with a noisy buildup in the background, he’s the dominating presence. (Like on Want, Frege’s nimble drumming is the duo's secret weapon.) He ends by yelling “That's fine” over and over, blurring the line between empowering battle cry and admission of defeat.
“Apollo Beneath the Whip,” from Want, aimed for similar heights, and “Powders” hits the bullseye with a smart combination of focus and expansion. That it comes first is indicative of their black humor (their Twitter puts most sadboyploitation to shame)—they’re smirking a bit by clobbering you with their heaviest song from the jump. More than any metal song in particular, it’s reminiscent of Future Islands’ smash “Seasons (Waiting on You),” and while it’s more volatile, the futility of trying to reason with someone when they have no intention of agreeing with you still stings.
Alan Vega’s passing reminds us that there will never be another band like Suicide, but Wreck and Reference are perhaps the closest to a contemporary inheritors we’ll see. It’s not just the minimalism that begats catchiness, or the confrontation-yet-cool attitude, or the fuck-you to traditional rock/metal instrumentation, but the overall sense that grime and rot, whether it originates in ’70s NYC streets or in the chattering mind, can bloom beautiful music. Suicide defined punk and overcame it at the same time; Indifference comes long after metal’s formation, and despite that, Wreck and Reference are paving the way for a new language that may go beyond metal.
