I thought I could blast through a review on Carved Up’s new full length, Matador, but upon closer listen, I realized the hefty sonic load offered on the album deserves deeper consideration:
I thought I could blast through a review on Carved Up’s new full length, Matador, but upon closer listen, I realized the hefty sonic load offered on the album deserves deeper consideration:
For surface-value’s sake, I’ll say Carved Up’s aural grind is ripe with melodic moments, and calls up sonic queues from your beloved Caved In records. But make no mistake, Matador is much more than a mere throw back to the days when heart-felt harmonies adorned Post-Hardcore albums a plenty—Matador is weighty, layered, and aspiring.
Taking to noise and fuzz-fueled textural components, Carved Up is careful to ensure Matador is also discernible and rocking, as swimming, kinetic riffs are cultivated by avant-garde chord changes, that make for angular, bending, interesting moments.
I most appreciated Matador’s largely instrumental approach: while Carved Up vocalist J. Coooper’s spitty high-throat vox does the trick on a couple of the tracks, it’s the driving guitars and arpeggiaic melodiousness that really tells the Matador tale—one that’s colorful, at times harrowing, but mostly unpredictable and fascinating.
The bottom line is that the tracks on Matador are best considered chapters in the greater context of the album’s sonic scenery, one that’s a dignified, creative, well-done effort. It’s the kind of stuff you’ll have to study intently to get its feel down pat, to know the cues, but once you do, you’ll find here an album of truly enjoyably complex and challenging music that’s likely to quickly rise to the top of your list of one of the best new releases.
