Nothing special here, it's what was expected without the mastermind of Tyondai....
It's a shame because they were heading for a long and strong career after the debut 'Mirrored' entered our lives. Well anyway, Battles are an energetic Math-Rock/Post-Rock group from New York City.
It's hard to pin point the better tracks, because they all follow the same basic patters. 'Africastle' sounds delightful, but it's repetitive. It starts well with nice little loops, but it has little variations other than a heavy guitar riff towards the end, but then the track finishes.
'Ice Cream' is the one that's.. the single.. It's decent at best, bad lyrics. However, I really like this song. It has that catchy, energetic feel and it's a bit stop/start which is classic Battles. Where they used to be all about long, eventful textures. They've kind of turned poppy and began recording with pop aspects rather than the Post-Rock tendencies on there debut.
'Futura' has the same pattern as Africastle, at this point you know that they've really lost their form, the song goes nowhere. Inchworm sounds, better than the others, for a split second. Before the repetitive simplistic pattern which they have just done takes over. This track is just one big build up, but no ending.
'Wall Street' has a much better start, they repeat the opening pointlessly for 30 wasted seconds. The tune is decent enough here, this was one of the tracks that I enjoyed, but again.. it's incredibly repetitive.
At this point they remind me of Happy Mondays when Shaun didn't sing for the Album cut.
I like Gary Numan in general, but on the song 'My Machines' he was shocking, no form of passion or any enjoyment was taken from this. it's again repetitive, with just loops and no variants.
Nothing really improves, the bass work gets a little better, 'Sweetie & Shag' is a good example.
'Sundome' then sounds like it's about to break out into a Dub track. But it turns into some sort of Christmas like, mockery, You have no idea what Yamantaka is even saying.
~Eddie
6.2