The Malpractice

Mass

Written by: TL on 05/02/2014 18:38:31

After tenures in domestically hyped bands I Am Bones and Beta Satan (both of which I must I admit to having barely listened to), The Malpractice is singer/guitarist Johannes Gammelby's third band to gain traction in the Danish indie scene. The band debuted in 2010 with the full length "Tectonics" and is currently getting an early start on 2014 with just released second effort "Mass". Purveying a sort of electro/noise-punk "Tectonics" originally cast the band with a poppy edge in their songs that made them easy to get to know, but here in 2014 "Mass" sees them develop a harder edge and a more uncompromising stance, the songs centering more on riffs and effects than on quirky vocal hooks.

The core of the sound seems to be angry, machinistic guitar noise that churns upon steady beats while half-spoken, half-sung vocals whisper and threaten in a manner that reminds me of Nine Inch Nails. They're contrasted in a dynamic that reflects the sound momentarily in eerie, weightless moments where synths rule and a thin, Mew-esque falsetto haunts just at the corner of your senses. The instrumental aspect has a very lethargic feel to it, like the band members want nothing better than to just crank up the noise and let it dissolve them, and mainly it falls on the back and forth between Gammelby's relatable lower vocal style and his spooky falsetto to imbue things with a sense of dynamics.

A good example of the band's quieter moments comes in "The Big Empty", which sees the overdubbed falsetto carry a clean guitar melody forwards with a frantic cymbal ringing in the background, until effect-laden guitar and key notes trade punches in the end. Along with "The Amazon Pull" the song forms a mellow mid-section on the album, where listening feels like you're watching space crafts float eternally through cosmos only to eventually crash into each other majestically in an oppressively noisy track like "Dead Zones".

Personally I think that "Mass" is the closest to working in a song like the latter, or in the opening trio of "Seem", "Droop" or "Lights Out" where the beats are varied, the riffs have impact and the vocals are dynamic. Here it feels like the tracks are still rooted on earth and like they have something to instill in the listener. As the record moves on, it feels more and more like the band opts to entirely discard the notion of being engaging, because they don't want to compromise some dystopian sci-fi vision that they're hoping to conjure up with their reverberating noises - which turns "Mass" into the kind of record that seems to be dying so hard to be art that it eventually pays the price of becoming somewhat boring. Truth is in the ears of the listener of course, and I see other domestic reviewers disagree, but in mine I'm sad to report that "Mass" does not echo with anything so profound that it seems worth trading off the (comparative) directness of "Tectonics" for, and to attribute a very banal effect to an album that seems intent to be anything but, I'm afraid "Mass" just mostly makes me struggle to not fall asleep.

4

Download: Seem, Lights Out
For The Fans Of: Nine Inch Nails, Beta Satan, Black Light Burns
Listen: facebook.com/themalpractice

Release Date 03.02.2014
Crunchy Frog



(No full tracks were currently available outside of WiMP/Spotify, hence the teaser)

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