Like the Kevin McCloud of the music world, Brontide have thus far built their name on the art of the exquisite build, and so open their return with second album ‘Artery’ in recognisable fashion with the sprawling ‘Tonitro’. Despite being available online for over a year, the track still retains its bite, the meandering guitar loops of Tim Hancock providing framework for a track which soon explodes into life with almost industrial precision, before melting away into an eerily vocal-esque synth.
The introduction of these electronics is undoubtedly ‘Artery’’s most noticeable change to the Brontide formula, particularly in the outro to ‘Kith and Kin’, which exhibits the kind of delicate danceability one would expect more of Jamie XX and his contemporaries than of a band who share members with Rolo Tomassi and La Roux. Perhaps it’s this musical eclecticism which generates Brontide’s increasingly indefinable sound – ‘post-rock’ seems too lazy and ‘prog-rock’ too archaic; they inhabit a realm all of their own.
As Charles Debussy once stated and a million and one GCSE music teachers then recited, “music is the spaces between the notes”, and it is this mantra that Brontide appear to have adopted on ‘Artery’. Where debut ‘Sans Souci’ swamped the trio’s sound with riff after riff (an almost inevitability when you lock three mind-numbingly talented musicians such as these in a room), ‘Artery’ is evidence of a newfound sense of musicality as they allow the tracks to breathe and swell, the synths adding a layer of warmth that no down-tuned riff salad could ever achieve.
Though that is not to say that the moments of jarring euphoria upon which ‘Sans Souci’ was heralded as the pinnacle of its scene are lacking, the eight-minute ‘Knives’ in particular offering a crushing midsection which keeps the momentum going flawlessly through the album’s latter half. Indeed, to spend too much time reducing an album such as this to individual tracks would be borderline blasphemy. Brontide’s true majesty still lies in their innate ability to craft a record which flows seamlessly from track to track, and from metallic breakdown to delicate birdsong, without ever feeling laboured.
More an evolution than a revolution, perhaps, but when you storm out of the gates with a record like ‘Sans Souci’, a follow-up this strong is deserving of nothing but applause. Much like their songwriting, Brontide’s career is sure to steadily build into something breathtaking. ‘Artery’ is their sure foundation.
TOM CONNICK