On a whim, I recently participated in an online focus group about modern country music. While listening to these song snippets, I was astonished to hear that all the songs sounded the same. Not similar, the same. The same glossy production, the same vocal styles, the same beats per minute and instrumentation. They all sounded terrible to my ears, but that’s beside the point – what I took away from the experience was the absolute lack of diversity in sound. 

Heavy music, on the other hand, is all about diversity of sound. This is my third review this week, and all three albums sound entirely different. A big part of what enables this diversity, I would argue, is heavy music’s embrace of “ugly” sounds. Other genres shy away from tension and discordance, forces that heavy musicians can wield to incredible results. Take, for example, the band Amplifiers and their new album, The Inevitability of Disillusionment. 

Amplifiers are far from the heaviest band I’ve ever covered. One could argue that they’re more of an alternative rock band than a metal band, and their Bandcamp page lists Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and Sigur Ros as inspirations, among others. They may be sedate compared to, say, the death metal album I covered earlier this week, but they’re still bringing in an interesting diversity of sounds. Vocalist/bassist/keyboardist Si Lewis has a strong voice that strongly recalls Maynard James Keenan of the aforementioned Tool. Each track starts with shoegaze as a starting point and mixes in elements of post rock, industrial, space rock and, of course, some metal riffing. Tracks like “Secrets, and the Weight that They Carry” are a good example of all the band’s influences coming together in one track. Listen to it exclusively below:

The Inevitability of Disillusionment is an album that grew on me after repeated listens. Amplifiers have a strong sense of melody, and several of these tracks have been rattling around in my head for the last week. The album flows seamlessly from one track to the next, giving it a cohesive vibe that feels like it’s taking you through a cosmic journey with a distinct destination in mind. Indeed, the album explores concepts of loss and overwhelming burdens, only to ultimately land you in a warm embrace. “Safe / You are safe / You are safe here with me,” Lewis sings at the end of the final track, “Disillusionment; To Acquiesce.” 

If Amplifiers were to shave down some of the more experimental aspects of their sound, I suspect that they could find the kind of mainstream success that's so rare in the music world these days for guitar-based bands. I also suspect that they're entirely disinterested in doing so. The very elements that make this album work - the shoegaze sound, the electronic flourishes, the post-rock song structures - are the very thing that make their music interesting. I'm glad there are still bands out there that choose to follow their unique muses rather than become sanded down to the point that they're indistinguishable from the others in the genre.

Amplifiers' The Inevitability of Disillusionment releases on Friday, September 18^th.