Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything

It was the very early morning of July 25th (in my timezone, anyway) and I was in a Discord call with my AOTY friends. We were pretty much chilling out and talking about our favorite releases this year. CLJesse mentioned Loathe's "I Let It in and It Took Everything", an album I've been meaning to check out, as her favorite and Pipe listened to it right away. We continued sharing our favorite records of each year from the 90's onwards... then I check back in the call and see him throwing his headphones on the floor 6 tracks in. Holy shit I was fucking hyped! So Pipe, Trey and I started listening together so we could shit ourselves simultaneously with the rest of the call watching as we all had stunned looks on our faces.

The Liverpool band's most rooted sound heavily derives itself from metalcore, with its ferocious, djent-y, downtuned riffs, face-punchingly intense drums and screamed vocals that are made up of a variety of metal styles. It's all freakishly in-your-face fun and incredibly dense! There are tracks like the immediate and intense "Gored" and "New Faces in the Dark”, with an ending breakdown so noisy it'll make Pipe throw his headphones (okay I'm done) and make metalheads' eyeballs shit themselves into mush! The engineering is so damn good! Every drum hit and vocal track, not to mention the bass of those Baritone Jazzmasters, is accentuated perfectly here!

Probably the most prominent sound of the album, however, is in its shoegaze-influenced tracks. The soft, effects-heavy vocals from Kadeem France, the more chord-heavy riffs, the alternative approach, it all presents itself before you could mutter "Def". This influence can be seen as extremely obvious, but I never saw this as ripping off their sound. I was absolutely floored by how drop-dead beautiful these tracks are, with the melodic and catchy "Two-Way Mirror" and the slow, synth-laden "Is It Really You?" serving as the highlights of this sound.

My favorite tracks from "ILIIAITE" are the ones where they combine both elements of their sound. "A Sad Cartoon" melds heavy, earth-shattering riffs and great vocals with ease and "Screaming" is probably my favorite track of the entire package. Kadeem's vocal performances are, once again, absorbing and it contains one of the best guitar hooks of the year! We also get these ambient, IDM-esque interludes that make the album flow together nicely.

Goddamn! "I Let It in and It Took Everything" is a fucking metalcore treat with lots of diversity, amazing production and some of my favorite moments of the year to boot! If there was a flaw I had with this, it would be that not all the transitions work perfectly (case-in-point the transition from "Is It Really You?" to "Gored"). Overall, this album is still one of my favorite surprise albums of the year!

Fav Tracks: Screaming, A Sad Cartoon, Is It Really You?, Two-Way Mirror, Gored, New Faces in the Dark, I Let It in and It Took Everything, Aggressive Evolution, Broken Vision Rhythm

Least Fav Track: Theme

Score:
9.8
Amazing