Album Review: Idles - "Crawler"

 

I'll admit it - Idles are one of those bands who it took me a while to warm to. Having first discovered them via 2018's Joy As An Act Of Resistance, it felt like despite a few genuinely great moments it was a bit of a case of hype over substance - however, with last year's Ultra Mono they delivered something genuinely great - a proper concrete punch of an album which knocked the breath clean out of you with its sheer righteous fury. Pressure on for the follow-up then.

I have to say that Crawler doesn't exactly get off to a great start - opening track MTT 420 RR is a five minute drony drudge which never kicks into gear. Fair point, it shows a different side to the band but an actual tune here would have been nice. The discordant The Wheel at least packs the aggro back in but the atonal snarling here suggests that this is going to be much harder going than its predecessor, a point reinforced with the doomy Joy Division style When The Lights Come On although there's a vicious aggression bubbling underneath that you'd never have got from Ian Curtis and co before Car Crash sees Joe Talbot screaming the lyrics out over an almost trip-hop beat. Easy listening it very much ain't.

The New Sensation does at least offer a bit of manna for those of us who got into the band via Ultra Mono with a ferocious attack on the government's suggestion that musicians should just retrain following the collapse of the live music scene following Covid over grinding bass and pounding drums. Stockholm Syndrome is similarly vicious with its anti-royalist sentiment and is followed by the sinister former single Beachland Ballroom to make up a killer one-two-three in the middle of the album.

Crawl! is another good one with the driving riff and Talbot's ferocious lyrics about drug addiction combining to devastating effect and the pummelling Meds is cut from similar cloth. Progress strips things back to an almost minimalist electronica with its ghostly lament. King Snake takes the tempo back up to good effect before the slightly sluggish The End signs things off in a slightly underwhelming fashion.

Crawler is the sound of Idles moving their sound on after Ultra Mono and that's to be applauded - as we often say here on Nite Songs, there's nothing worse than bands who can't seem to get their heads around the concept that rock music needs to keep evolving or else it dies. The only drawback is that it gets off to such a slow start with the first four tracks veering from dull to downright unlistenable - bear with it though because once that initial bump in the road's out of the way, the group slip into gear for the rest of the album apart from the slightly disappointing closer and come up with something pretty decent with the discordancy being reined into the band's trademark sound to keep the fans of old satisfied while not feeling as if they're just repeating themselves. A complicated beast then but it's one worth persevering with.

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NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

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