No Cure – It Is Going To Get Dark
No Cure – It Is Going To Get Dark
Sharptone Records
Release date: 10/07/26
Review by Jon Deaux
7/10
I was hoping for a happy ending. What I got, was an ending
Four young lads from Birmingham, Alabama, seem to have examined the current state of affairs in our world and realized that the right reaction isn’t a session of therapy, isn’t walking away from the problem, isn’t even drinking something strong. The answer is a dozen tracks full of heavy metal and a guy shouting at you, ‘Tell me why you deserve to keep living’. Strong opening statement, I’d say. Usually, a band opens an album with “Hello, my name is…” sometimes with some kind of sound effects for effect. Not this one. It opens with an accusation.
‘When The Spasms Cease’ starts with the singer yelling at God himself, trying to find out how we ended up like that. And I’d like to approach him and say: mate, you’re in a straight edge hardcore band from Birmingham, Alabama, in 2026. You’re here for the exact same reasons we all are. Badly. There were a number of warning signs on the way here, a lot of them. You’ve ignored each and every one and now you are asking about it. And he doesn’t stop. That wasn’t a one-time thing, that’s the very character of the album you’re listening to and it never stops for the rest of the album.
‘Oblivion Crusade’ sounds exactly like its title and that doesn’t happen often –usually, they reach ‘Apocalyptic’ and you hear a guy falling down the stairs while holding a guitar and yelling ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’ But he falls down those stairs with a conviction and he looks as if he meant to fall down and he’s angry with you for even thinking of the opposite.
‘Brain Matter Displacement’ is a revenge song, technically, in the way a flamethrower is a kitchen device. The usual thing you hear in betrayal songs is ‘you broke my heart’. This song skips that step and goes directly to displacing someone’s brain contents, while a guest rapper is exchanging lines with death growls. It shouldn’t work on paper. But it works in practice –just like a punch of a stranger shouldn’t work to wake you up but, well, it sure does.
‘Slowly Turning Blue’ is the song that will ruin your evening without warning. It’s about seeing someone you love breaking down slowly, drenched in distortion and somehow this song seems the most tender on this album. Three minutes of listening and you will call your mother. Not to say anything nice. Just to hear that she answers the phone. “Hello, are you alright? Yes, goodbye.”
‘Ironclad’ gets a guest vocalist for the phrase ‘ironclad till my dying breath’. That’s the most committed thing I have ever heard on the record or the most bleak marriage vow in the history of mankind. Either way, I would like to attend. I will bring a flask. I have a feeling that it’s going to be long.
‘Starved In Sanctuary (My Hands Are In Your Chest Cavity)’ wins for the Most Honest Song Title hands down. There is no metaphors, no analysis. No one sits somewhere with a lyric sheet trying to understand ‘what it means’. This song tells you everything that’s happening and where are the hands, which is more than half of songs that have titles like “Echoes (Reprise)” and turn out to be about some parking dispute in 2019.
‘My World In Flames’ finally does the thing that was threatened since track one and burns alive on record.
And then, ‘Convulsing In the Dark.’ That’s the one that was released first, the calling card of the band and it’s easy to see why. Needling harmonics in a riff that isn’t distorted but sharpened, drums playing some horrible, tectonic, seasick-like beats that make the word ‘energetic’ an insult and an actual, ominous choir appears under the breakdown and asks you, why do you deserve to keep living.
By the time the album gets ‘Shapen The Blade’ with another guest vocal, it’s already done pretending that there is somewhere else to go and just descends further like a man who has already pre-paid the funeral and now he just wants to finish the papers.
The closing ‘Purity Spiral’ gets a guest singer whose career is built on sounding like a collapsing building –exactly what’s needed. No redemption arc. No soft acoustic ending for everyone to cry in the parking lot. Just the door shutting behind you and you’re standing in the dark room that’s been left for you, wondering if you should boil the water or lie down where you are.
Subtle, it is not. Subtlety belongs to the bands who aren’t sure yet if there is any problems with the world. But these are four people –Blaythe Steuer on vocals, Aesop Mongo and Kyle Ray on guitars, Duncan Newey on drums– who have examined the news, the weather and their pulse and found out that the only sane reaction to the current situation is the decibels. There is something rather comforting in such commitment. As watching a man confidently striding into a glass door because he decided, as a matter of his personal principle, that the glass doors don’t exist and he won’t be the first one to give up.
‘It Is Going To Get Dark’ is ferociously executed, structurally relentless, emotionally merciless, undercut only by the annoying thought that all four of these guys need a hug they would each refuse physically.
TRACKLISTING:
01. When The Spasms Cease
02. Oblivion Crusade
03. Brain Matter Displacement (ft. Jayway)
04. Slowly Turning Blue
05. Ironclad (ft. Tyler Short)
06. Starved In Sanctuary (My Hands Are In Your Chest Cavity)
07. My World In Flames
08. Convulsing In the Dark
09. Shapen The Blade (ft. Skyler Condor)
10. Purity Spiral (ft. Vincent Bennett)
LINKS:
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