Album Review: This Will Destroy You - 'Another Language'

This Will Destroy You have always been at the weighty end of the instrumental scale, their music takes patience, but offers great reward to those willing to employ it. The band's fourth album 'Another Language' is a slow mover, its gentle openings set the scene for something to ease into.

The introduction track 'Dustism' waits until its end to really open out into a wide-spreading clash of sounds driven by percussion and inclusive of many a colour, slowly building along the way with sparse landscapes. This continues with 'New Topia', backed by airy synths, the guitar drifts in and out managing to provide the main part of the story while the surrounding ambience sets the scene.

By TWDY standards, this record is actually quite hopeful, the band usually offers up some pretty dark and brooding music but the tones and sounds here seem like a light shining through all of that. If the opening of 'The Puritan' can't be easily matched with a sunrise or the birth of a butterfly or something like that then we give up.

The chaos slowly seeps in during 'War Prayer', a track that is overrun with distortion and crashing cymbals make for a beautiful mess that is the energetic pinnacle of the album. The group seem intent on building and destroying (go figure) the dynamics of this album, which plays like a calm sea for most of the time that is interrupted frequently with giant waves.

'Invitation' is possibly the album stand out thanks to the mix of live and programmed drumming patterns that provide a constant while the instrumentation swirls and builds around them, taking literal steps upwards into wide open spaces. Album closer 'God's Teeth' is the most relaxed moment, possibly a point of reflection on what everything before it made you feel, and still full of that bright ray of sunshine that runs rampant throughout the entire experience.

'Another Language' may well be the happiest This Will Destroy You have ever sounded, and possibly even the most cohesive. Their fourth outing is a very enjoyable journey that will toy with your emotions as it takes you on a trip. Beautifully executed.

1. Dustism

2. New Topia

3. Serpent Mound

4. War Prayer

5. The Puritan

6. Mother Opiate

7. Invitation

8. Memory Loss

9. God's Teeth