Crystal Castles – III

To begin the review on this third album in four years of the Toronto duo Crystal Castles, perhaps it is worthwhile looking in a rough and fast their first two works.. The first one came as a breath of fresh air, with boundless energy almost unstoppable on songs such as Crimewave or Vanished, which almost perfectly mingled howls of Alice Glass together with loops that appeared emerging from a 8bits of Nintendo. The second lost in their overall strength, showing perhaps more nihilistic spirit and less sociable, but still gave us great hits like Baptism or Celestica, without forgetting about this wonder song that is Not In Love, Primarily in the Robert Smith featuring….

Statements during the recording process of the new album by Ethan Kath to NME were "Every song we write is dark. We don't want anything else," and yet, after a few listeners, we have a more bright and less visceral album, with less presence of the usual spasmodic singer screams and with atmospheres that might range from 80s electro-industrial of Front 242 until less dark passages that could sign the Detroit or Chicago techno DJ's at end of that decade and the early 90s, even the recent trend witch house.

The gloomy background of their songs is still there, as is revealed in the letter of Affection "Catch a moth, hold it in my hand, crush it casually ", but the whine own distinctive in Glass voices sounds forced and even blured, recalling in some passages the voices of Romy Madley Croft on the last album by The XX. However, if this new album has grow in something is in the sonorous richness that lies behind the fog of synthesisers that abound in each song, getting as a sample the impressive Child I Will Hurt You that closes the disc. It would not be unreasonable even to catalogue some songs like Kerosene or Pale Flesh of new Shoegaze if the presence of guitars were majority, demonstrating the evolution towards new sounds of the group, away almost definitely of great 8bits hits. However, as if it were an essence to which it is impossible to turn away, fans of the group who long for that time may enjoy with Insulin, Violent Youth or especially with Transgender, which seems so closer to the songs that were on their second name shake album.