Loathe Review: A Stranger to You – Metalcore masters deliver stylistic deviations and surprising beauty | music

toIt took the division six years to produce this fourth album, making it clear that they wanted to make it very special. Accordingly, A Stranger to You ventures far beyond Liverpudlians’ core metal origins to create an odyssey of mixed and colliding genres. Punitive riffs and industrial noise slabs coexist with balm-like electronics, acoustic guitars, shoegaze, tinkling jazz piano, and spoken word narrations by guest rapper Bucky Sugar (“Forward Movement, Forever”). Other guests include singer Ollie Appleyard of Leeds rock band Static Dress, production duo Nowhere2run and, quite unlikely, jazz and soul producer Jordan Racki.

Precedents for this kind of radical departure from metal include Deafheaven’s “Corrupt Ordinary Human Love” and Linkin Park’s divisive but compelling “A Thousand Suns,” but, if anything, Loathe makes more musical turns. The block of flats rushes between gentle atmosphere and guttural singing. The soaring Fortress Down and Meet My Maker suggest a slightly heavier source of inspiration. Of all things Hard to Pretend, it’s reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s pioneering jazz of the early 1970s, while The Way It Breaks effectively haunts us like a disintegration-era treat.

Loathe hasn’t abandoned heavy music – the likes of Gemini and Revenant feature granite solidity – but the frequent shift is backed by excellent songwriting. The wildest curveball, “The Ladder,” is simply a surprisingly beautiful love song. In lesser hands this could have been an album, but the band’s bold vision is so brilliantly executed that it makes for a thrilling ride, where you never anticipate what’s coming next.