This Is Glue

Description

Christchurch, New Zealands Salad Boys are back with This Is Glue, the follow up to their critically acclaimed 2015 debut album Metalmania. Recorded once again by bandleader/guitarist Joe Sampson at his home studio, This Is Glues twelve songs dig deeper, with sharper hooks embedded deep within a more mature musicality. This Is Glue hones Sampsons songwriting chops to a razor edge, with many of the albums songs sounding utterly timeless. The ris and melodies seem all too familiar, perhaps recalling greats that came before them (The Chills, R.E.M., The Bats), but Sampson has a voice all his own and This Is Glues tunes tread upon a singular path of measured melancholy. The themes are darker, the lyrics more claustrophobic and yearning with Sampson confronting anxiety, mortality, and fear through the his abstract lyrical lens; a cracked world view, to be sure. Songs like Exaltation, Dogged Out and Divided convey a world-weariness of a man twice his age. Thats not to say that This Is Glue is all doom and gloom; album opener Blown Up kickstarts with motoric drumming that crescendos into a thrilling guitar ri that could crack mountains. Psych Slasher crashes forward frenetically awash in phaser before easing into a melodic denouement buoyed by a bubbling synthesizer before a tidal wave of guitar crashes down again. Existential angst has never felt so exhilarating.