Another Language＜Bone Vinyl＞

Building from their 2005 debut EP, Young Mountain, Texas instrumental act This Will Destroy You moved from tense, brooding post-rock territory into a far heavier territory. A few years into their craft, the quartet had honed a sound relying on equal influence from bludgeoning doom metal and textural shoegaze guitar tones while still holding on to some of the sprawling, cinematic character of their post-rock roots. Another Language, the band's third proper full-length and first album since 2011's Tunnel Blanket, sees them further refining their approach with more intricate, otherworldly production methods. The album opens up with fields of moody ambient synth tones and subdued guitars on "New Topia," a track that soon grows from laid-back rhythms and gentle bell sounds into a slow, pounding wail. The band's love of drone metal comes through only in production qualities here, as the drums, guitars, keys, and all other sounds blur into a hungry wash of delay and toothy noise. These explorations with wobbly delay and warped sounds continue with the dubbed-out drums and high-pitched feedback synths of "Dustism" and later on resurface in the rolling, distorted rhythms and faraway guitar sounds of "Invitation." This Will Destroy You have long been a post-rock band that excelled at brevity, turning in songs that found intense territory without needing to build melodramatically through overly long jams. Another Language is no different, with its nine songs all succinctly traveling through passages of bizarre echoes, blown-out explosions of sound, and the band's always airtight sense of dynamics. Even the pastoral album closer, "God's Teeth," with its subdued tones and Eno-esque feel of ambient stillness, resists the temptation to linger too long in wild wonder. Instead, the tune sets the album gracefully down in a bed of William Basinski-recalling decaying analog tape sounds. The gorgeous and haunting ending leaves more than a few questions unanswered, and begs listeners to play the album again from the start to seek them out once more. ~ Fred Thomas