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Are Metz a punk band playing post-rock? Or a post-rock band playing punk? It’s a dichotomy that fuels Up On Gravity Hill, their fifth album. Since forming in 2007, the Canadian trio have reached for greater and greater complexity, but found themselves drawn back again and again, almost gravitationally, to the original blueprint of teeth-rattling distortion and agitated grooves. This push-and-pull was evident in embryo on the band’s thrilling debut—”Negative Space” ends with glitchy gobbets of electronic noise, and “Nausea” comprises strange tape loops—but on Up On Gravity Hill the separation is most clearly defined.
John Martyn, in an excellent documentary about his life and career called Johnny Too Bad (2004), describes his fondness for chords that are “broken, shattered, somewhat tattered, torn at the edges.” Similar post-rock-y chords can also be found all over Up On Gravity Hill. Even played loudly and noisily, they disturb the propulsive punk energy, giving the songs light and shade; the contrast is weird, like ornate detailing on a power drill, or a claw hammer inscribed with poetry. There’s something almost pugilistic about the way old Metz does battle with new Metz. The harmonies on “99” seem cynical, like Metz are sneering at themselves for doing harmonies. The album is pockmarked with tempo shifts, time signatures shifts, and rhythmic switch-ups, as if different voltages are being channeled into the songs. The word that keeps springing to mind is “convulsive.”
The album opener “No Reservation / Love Comes Crashing” is where their stall is set out most assertively. Violins (courtesy of composer Owen Pallett) and the “broken, shattered” guitar chords do battle with drummer Hayden Menzies and bassist Chris Slorach’s churning undertow. The whole ends with a thrilling coda featuring vacuum cleaner-style guitars, snares that rattle like machine-gun fire, and a snarled vocal round of the lyric “feel love crashing down.” It’s like the culmination of a particularly sulky Mogwai track played by punks, or The Minutemen interpreting My Bloody Valentine. “No Reservation / Love Comes Crashing” is one of the best tracks in Metz’s catalog.
In the liner notes, singer and guitarist Alex Edkins says, “The lyrical content is more heart-on-sleeve than I’ve ever allowed myself to do” and “I tried to be direct with my words, this record felt like a big step.” It’s this directness which allows the punkiness and the post-rock to co-exist—it’s an emulsifier. As long as there’s the odd anthemic chorus or catchy guitar line, Metz can spring, impishly, between styles, confident that their knack for writing bangers will plot a steady course through the maelstrom.
