Progressive Parisian sextet We Insist! have achieved something rare with their third album, Oh! Things Are So Corruptible. While drawing on a number of influences within the genre, they’ve managed to stake out a sound and style that’s all their own – and made an astonishingly good record in the process.
Abandon all hope of simple verse-chorus dynamics and pop structure before you enter – you’re going to need your brain switched on for this album. It’s challenging, provocative, and wilfully obscure; a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the facile and obvious.
So, step into a landscape of time signatures that shift like quicksand underfoot, driven by high-precision drumming. There are paths across this treacherous territory, however; the ways are marked out by clean untreated guitar and bass tones, occasionally distorted but more often relying on inventive melody and rhythm to deliver an authentic heaviness – a heaviness that comes from density and control rather than formless aggression.
Polyrhythmic riffs and arpeggios veer from discord to melodic clarity, sometimes within the space of a bar or two; rapid-fire changes of pace and texture hang like tripwires across your route; to either sides there are demented squalls of free-jazz saxophone noodling and intricate fenceworks of bass in counterplay to the percussion. It’s almost schizoid at times, but there’s an intriguing vulnerability peeking between the cracks – a vestige of recognisable sanity that beckons you forward in search of an unknown reward.
That reward is promised by the vocals of drummer Etienne Gaillochet, whose ability to play those drum patterns and sing at the same time is dwarfed only by a command of the English language that makes most native-speaking musicians sound like primary school kids. Often compressed and crunched up like a transatlantic phonecall, Gaillochet’s voice conjures up the psychodramas that give narrative weight to the music. Hear him demand that we bring him his medicine on “Seclusion”, hint at creepy dysfunction in “Down To The Cellar”, and perform a dissection of machismo in “No Coward” that will resonate with fans of Maynard James Keenan’s lyrical approach. This is cinematic storytelling in musical form.
I always try to avoid paraphrasing the blurbs on albums and websites, but there’s no way around it in this case – We Insist! are the musical equivalent of a David Lynch movie. Dark, moody and psychologically disturbing, but also addictive, compelling, and impossible to ignore, Oh! Things Are So Corruptible deserves to be played repeatedly wherever fans of intense and intelligent rock music gather. This record places We Insist! firmly on the map – the next one will see them seizing new territories.
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