The music – a sawblading, industrial scrape that’s equal parts Swans and 90s Sepultura – is endurance test enough, but then comes Michael Berdan’s merciless self-analysis. He draws uncomfortable conclusions that might be exquisitely personal, but they linger and gnaw: suggestions that chivvy endlessly away at the listener in order to lay bare every weakness, every flaw, and every wretched, deceitful character trait you hope to keep hidden from the people around you
American Standard is, paradoxically, perhaps the band’s most straight-up listenable record while also their hardest to process thematically. As outlined in a recent essay for the Quietus, it focuses in large part on a life lived with bulimia nervosa. Like the band’s four previous albums and sundry collaborations, these experiences are examined under a harsh, bright, unforgiving light in a manner that’s deeply unflattering but also cuttingly incisive.
The twenty-minute title track opens proceedings with a stark self portrait: the unadorned call-and-response of a man hating what he sees in the mirror. The words are cold and factual, and while they’re venomously delivered there’s not a whit of self-pity to be found. This objectivity is difficult to accept, and it almost feels like a mercy when the rest of the band begin their grinding accompaniment. Musically, things take the form of a locked-groove whump that comes wrapped in an uncharacteristic shimmer: the likes of Shiner, Hum and Deftones spring to mind, lending a sort of woozy prettiness to the churn that even Berdan’s hectoring, drowned-Dalek vocals can’t quite corrode. Elsewhere there is slow crumple and dissolve, and, for a time, a slice of chiming, genetically-altered black metal that brings acts like Botanist and Deafheaven to mind.
Opening with such a lengthy, draining, impressive piece feels like a definite power move. In lesser hands the gambit would certainly not pay off. Uniform, though, know precisely what they’re doing, and there’s barely time to breathe before the full-blown percussive attack of ‘This Is Not A Prayer’ detonates. The drumming of Michaels Sharp and Blume is frontloaded while Ben Greenberg’s guitars needle and burn, a marked contrast to the following ‘Clemency’, which leans hard on a huge, rending, dominant riff that’s resembles the Godflesh anthem ‘Mothra’ being played by sludge titans Noothgrush. Even at these heavier points, though, there’s a strange, ambient fullness to the music: a sort of amniotic warmth that presses in even as the rest of the band seeks to push away.
Interestingly for an album that’s so red-raw and personal, Berdan sought external collaborators to help him carve out the album’s lyrical content. Authors B.R. Yeager and Maggie Siebert were brought onboard, their uncomfortable, outré works fully in keeping with the band’s own blighted worldview. Rather than just another act of boldness, though, this partnership also feels artistically and conceptually logical: another rational artistic step forward for a band who consistently create some of today’s bravest and most beautifully annihilatory rock music.
