Yamantaka//Sonic Titan first exploded on the scenes a couple of years ago, when their self-released debut album cracked Canada’s Polaris Prize shortlist, immediately putting them in the same top-tier class as acts like Grimes, Feist and Cadence Weapon.
Like Grimes, they’re a band using a variety of sounds and ideas, not all of them in the rock canon; the strong visual elements of their live shows have more than a little debt to Japanese visual kei bands like X Japan. Like Grimes, you could call them post-internet: they exist in a world where everything is accessible and anything can be an influence.
On Uzu, their range of influences is all over the map. “One” opens with a native chant and “Lamia” with a searing wave of guitar sludge. “Hall of Mirror” is a hard-driving, pounding track where they rock as hard as I’ve ever heard them. The two-part track “Seasickness Pt.1” and “Seasickness Pt.2” goes from piano-driven ballad to driving rocker, sounding a little bit like video game music sometimes. Indeed, YT//ST had an Indiegogo campaign for their video game Your Task // Shoot Things earlier this year. I wonder if there’s a connection between the two?
This is a concept album in the classic rock sense, although the story’s admittedly a little impenetrable to me. I have the basics – the main character discovers her powers, fights some people, and wrecks destruction – but the specifics are a little sketchy. In “Whalesong”, they introduce a “silent girl would become the ocean’s queen” over a wave of distorted guitar.
Waves are an appropriate metaphor here. Pictured on the cover is Mazu, a Buddhist goddess of the sea and the main character of this record. She’s standing on a giant guitar amp, with a microphone hanging above her and a raging sea at her back. She’s not kidding around, threatening that people will drown, “with salt on their lips.” By album’s end, there’s been a battle in a hall of mirrors and the world’s plunged underwater as she’ “drowned by the memories of your touch.” It’s a raging, apocalyptic listen. It’s also memorable: songs like “One” and “Hall of Mirrors” are pulsating with energy. This is an album that demands your attention.
While listening to this album, I got the feeling they’ve been boning up on their David Bowie: this album feels a little like Ziggy Stardust to me. Not that it’s derivative in any way, but more in their similar structures. They alternate the soft songs and the hard rock, often lurching between piano-driven moments and crunching guitars, sometimes even in the same song. Both albums are about the uncontrolled growth of a character, who quickly finds themselves embroiled in situations beyond their control, and end in annihilation. Both albums have an interest in death, too: compare “Hall of Mirrors”, where the narrator stumbles into a room with “corpses hanging on the walls,” to Ziggy’s title track (“When the kids had killed a man…”) There’s even a nifty side break, too.
Uzu’s been a long time coming. They teased some of these songs over the past few months; “Lamia” was part of last summer’s Adult Swim Singles Program and a live version’s available on their Bandcamp page. They’ve built up a ton of hype, between re-releasing their first album, in-depth profiles from outlets like Pitchfork and the above-mentioned Your Task Shoot Things. And with Uzu, they’ve delivered: it’s one of the strongest, most confident-sounding albums I’ve heard all year.
It’s a wildly ambitious album, trying to tell a larger story that’s probably more than a little visual (I can only imagine what their stage show’s going to be for this record) while incorporating a variety of sounds and ideas. To their credit, YT//ST pull it off: not only does the story feel complete, but like a riptide, it’ll catch you unaware and drag you into its depths. Enjoy the ride.
Rating: 5/5