STILL-A THEFT

What is it with bands from Hull being just absolutely filthy? What’s in the water over there? Here on Still’s A Theft, the band has crafted an oppressive, blasted wintry soundscape that reflects the grief of band leader Fraser Briggs’s sudden loss of his father midway through the initial writing process. This deep sense of loss pervades the record, defines it.

A Theft opens ominously, sounding like something straight out of an A24 horror movie before we’re treated to the band’s icy and feral brand of black metal with Deathwish, Inc.-style hardcore. The band not just on the album opener "Yearn" but throughout, such as on "Small Mercies of Falling Apart," reminded me quite a bit of Pulling Teeth. Speaking of Deathwish, "Only Time Will Tell" and "Dark" are tracks where the band felt like a blackened Converge, and "Life Eclipses Living" is a claustrophobic combination of doom metal, sludge, and what I’d describe as the quintessential Deathwish, Inc. sound.

"Oscillate" re-visits the haunting ambience that brackets the opening track "Yearn" for its first half before the band explodes into its wildly unsettling part that feels like, if we extend the horror movie comparison, whatever monstrosity had been lurking in the shadows has burst onscreen in all its terribleness.

A Theft is an extremely difficult record to listen to in its gut-wrenching bleakness, and is not a journey for the faint of heart. It is a masterclass in the use of abrasive sounds and the cultivation of a dark, frost-bitten atmosphere to channel loss and heavy emotions like grief into a cathartic onslaught that sonically encapsulates these struggles.