Is Mainstream Music Making You Dumber?
Matriarchs Has Your Cure!!!
Hailing from Los Angeles, Matriarchs is a band that plays a blend of music that sounds dark and aggressive, yet melodic and catchy at the same time. The band recently released a brand new project titled Scandalous Jointz, a collection of 9 tracks that stretch the band’s vision with, track by track. The opening number, “Disconnected”, gets it all started with some seriously killer guitar tones and with some heavy drum grooves. The sound echoes the glory days of great metal core, reminding me of groups such as Dripback, Terror or Walls of Jericho, just to mention a few. “Judas” kicks in with a faster tempo and some blistering guitar riffs that wear some unique thrash metal references on their sleeves. I love the drop in the choruses as well as the incredibly cool dissonant lead notes. The vocals are on point all the time, relentless, aggressive and full of energy. It is definitely not easy to sing on top of such a massive musical background, but I do not see any problem whatsoever here. The music sits in with the guitar parts, the instrumental sections of the song perfectly. The 3rd song has some truly insane guitar feedback in the intro, and it leads into one of them most interesting arrangements on the entire record. There is definitely a lot more melody here, as well as some riffing that make me think of Metallica at their best.
The song that follows is titled “Haunted” and it is a slow-burning track that eases into really crazy change in beat, making for one of the most complex drum arrangements on the whole record. I love it when bands experiment with song structures and this works really well to add an eclectic twist to the album.
