in grief or in hope
Genre Good
Experimental
Metal
Devastating
Slow Burn
IndieThe review
This is the most texturally dense and sonically overwhelming record this trio has made, built almost entirely from layered guitars and voice rather than the drum-anchored dynamics of earlier work. Reviewers consistently single out the production and arrangement as the record's biggest achievement — distortion is pushed to the edge of collapse yet the mix stays legible, leaving room for harmonics, drones, and vocal manipulation to breathe rather than blur into noise. The vocal performance draws particular praise for its rawness and control in the same breath.
Stylistically this is a subtraction rather than an expansion: stripping out the rhythm section in favor of guitar-and-voice interplay is read as a bold, credible reinvention rather than a retreat. A minority of critics note that the turbulence occasionally threatens to pull individual songs apart into their component influences, and a few suggest the record's uncompromising, left-field character means it's unlikely to be the single album that comes to define the band's catalog — though most frame that as the band simply doing what it does exceptionally well again, not a real flaw.
Thematically, critics describe the record as built on sustained opposition — grief against hope, noise against melody, the internal against the external — and note the writing turns personal loss into something communal rather than purely confessional. There isn't much real disagreement in the coverage; the closest thing to a split is between critics who hear the album as an emotional high-water mark for the band and those who file it as another excellent, tonally consistent entry in an already strong catalog.
Who it's for
Listeners drawn to heavy, drone-based and post-metal music who want emotional weight alongside volume — fans of slow-building, texture-first guitar music who appreciate a record that rewards sustained, immersive listening over individual singles. Also a strong fit for listeners interested in grief and loss handled with restraint rather than melodrama, and for anyone who enjoys watching a long-running band restructure its own sound rather than repeat itself.
Who it's not for
Listeners who want hooks, conventional song structure, or rhythmic drive will likely find this dense and slow-moving — the absence of a drummer removes a lot of the propulsion that even other doom/drone records lean on. Casual or playlist-style listeners, and anyone allergic to sustained distortion and vocal manipulation, are also likely to bounce off it quickly. — heavy/bleak themes · grief and loss as central subject matter · sustained intense/harsh sound
Birds of a feather...
- MusicPink Moon (1972)
Shares Pink Moon's core gesture of radical subtraction, removing rhythmic support to leave guitar and voice carrying the full emotional weight. Both achieve a fragile, deeply exposed intimacy and sustain a uniform mood of grief and introspection without conventional catharsis.
92% - MusicWish You Were Here (1975)
Both process loss through structural restraint and long-form, slow-accreting passages. This record strips away a load-bearing element to expose grief, much like the source uses extended instrumental sections to build a melancholic, immersive mood. The abstraction and refusal to resolve the central tension mirror the source's confrontational introspection.
88% - MusicDisintegration (1989)
Both are slow-burn, texture-first albums that sustain a single emotional state (grief/hope and romantic melancholy) through immersive, layered sound; patience is rewarded with deep catharsis.
85% - MusicReality Awaits (2026)
Like Reality Awaits, this record uses deliberately processed, auto-tuned vocal distortion as a thematic device rather than a polish tool, mirroring an internal tension (grief/hope) in the production itself rather than just the lyrics.
82% - MusicThe weathervane is my body (2026)
Both records braid quiet, exposed passages against heavy payoff as their defining structural gesture rather than treating soft sections as mere interludes, and both use bodily/physical language as a vehicle for processing dread and loss.
80% - MusicThe New World (2026)
Shares the same 'persistence without resolution' emotional architecture, using slow-build, texture-first composition and deliberate irresolution as the emotional core rather than catharsis.
76% - MusicDifferent When It's Silent (2026)
Grief processed through a formal displacement (a voice receding or destabilizing) mirrors the source's use of vocal instability as the sonic site of mourning, both favoring atmosphere over narrative closure.
74% - MusicA Stranger to You (2026)
Shares Loathe's interest in extreme heavy music blurred with shoegaze and drone textures to enact psychological instability formally, with the same 'is the muddiness intentional or underbaked' critical tension around its slow, edge-of-collapse mix.
74% - MusicSet of All Sets (2026)
Shares the source's commitment to sustained intensity and duration-as-catharsis, using abstraction over confessional lyric detail to universalize emotional weight, though its palette is stripped-down rather than maximalist.
70% - MusicUnknown Pleasures (1979)
Both use sustained, slow-moving tension and a stripped-back instrumental approach to mirror internal collapse and grief; the subtraction of elements creates an emptiness that echoes the original album’s architecture of desolation.
70% - MusicHomogenic (1997)
Both albums treat grief as structural material rather than narrative content. The stripped-down, tension-riddled architecture and unstable vocal delivery echo Homogenic's use of formal instability to embody psychic extremity.
70% - MusicMetallica (The Black Album) (1991)
Both albums are driven by the personal trauma of a parent's death and a desire to process that loss through heavy, texture-first music. While this record is more experimental and stripped-back than the Black Album's arena-sized songs, it shares the same core of brooding grief and uses volume and distortion to achieve intimacy rather than aggression.
70%