Talons – ‘We All Know’ (Album Review)

Talons We All Know Album Review Southern Shade The Drowning Interview Bandcamp Band UK

As much as I enjoy post-rock and instrumental music, it’s easy to lose patience with outfits too easily labelled as “tremolo-picking bands”. A cliché already done to death a decade ago, such bands treat that high-speed technique as a compositional crutch – and turn otherwise promising songs into tedious patience-testers. When not employing a technical skill which does require the kind of right-hand stamina that heavy porn users would kill for, their next stop tends to be repetitive parts that dominate proceedings again to the point of wearing listeners out and distracting from some otherwise enjoyable moments.

Talons’ latest set is crying out for visual accompaniment; as a soundtrack to an appropriately arty film, We All Know would work perfectly. But experienced in audio form only, this album repeatedly falls afoul of the common issues raised above. Previous Talons releases Hollow Realm and New Topographics have already proven these guys as great musicians – and in light of what’s come before, We All Know sounds like either a series of mid-writing-process jam sessions, or an attempt at soundtrack work.

If it’s secretly the latter, this project could be considered fascinating, exciting, and ambitious – but otherwise, We All Know comes across as inexplicably complacent.

LTK RATING: 60%

We All Know drops July 27, and can be found on Bandcamp.

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Posted on 21 June 2018

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