Take back most of what I said initially about the same-y-ness potentially limiting this... I've listened almost daily for a month straight, sometimes 2-3x. Helps that it works as background mood just as well as listening intently. I think it's gonna end up where I still see some element that's objectively more impressive about DIH and YPaA, and yet I return to this the most often.
If we're talking favorite Hum moments, mine starts right around the 2:00 mark in "Ms. Lazarus." (Also probably my favorite Hum track.)
I mean there's not much evolution of sound or experimentation but it's an excellent record. Almost certainly in my top twenty by the end of the year.
This may just be me, but of all bands I wish would experiment and evolve sonically, Hum isn't one of them. I think this is easily their heaviest record (at least since Electra2000), and I think moments of "Folding" and "Shapeshifter" are fresh, but otherwise, yeah. This does exactly what I want/need it to. Couldn't have asked for anything more.
it’s kinda interesting, this is instrumentally pretty heavy but it’s easily the lightest their vocals have ever been. there isn’t a single scream on the record.
Oh yeah I broadly agree. I was more or less playing devil's advocate - if I have to find fault, then in a year that Underneath by Code Orange was released, I could maybe pick at this not being that much of an evolvement. But yeah, it doesn't really bother me because the record is really good.
not, like, screaming screaming i guess. but definitely “punk” raw vocals/shouting or whatever. in a few places on both, and also electra. “the pod” comes to mind
Vox are definitely flatter here, even if screaming per se was never Matt's thing. Chorus of In the Den is really the only time he pushes the intensity at all, which happened quite a bit on DiH.
why arent their first two albums on apple music? would like to check them out anyway i havent listened to downward is heavenward or youd prefer an astronaut all that many times but this to me seems like a much, much bigger and slower record that's somehow simultaneously eternally chill and extremely unforgiving and unrelenting. idk, maybe its not a massive leap or evolution but it sounds like a hum record in 2020, not a hum record from say 2000, which is enough of a differentiation between their original run of albums and this record to make it seem like a pretty big gap. i mean just the difference in production quality is insane.
one of the best sounding rock records in recent memory. the guitar tones, the rhythm section, the way the vocals lay over all of it in the mix, its fucking immaculate. literally everything my dumb production nerd side wants in a record. im still picking up background guitars doing atmospheric shit over the monster riffs every time i listen.
Matt Talbott got really into stoner/doom metal at some point along the line there, he’s always having heavy bands play at his bar. You can tell that colored in this record a lot, like Desert Rambler and The Summoning aren’t way too far from the old stuff but they’ve never sounded quite like that before either
So... I've seen a band named Sleep mentioned in the last page. Guess I should check them? Extra points if they have sludgy or crushing riffs. That's all I'm constantly craving.