(Dine Alone)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Canadian five-piece post-hardcore band Alexisonfire have achieved a nice balance with their first studio album in 13 years after reuniting 7 years ago. On Otherness, they revisit the styles, compositions, and urgency that made them such a successful crossover band for the genre in the Aughts, all while maintaining the sense of exploration that makes them ever-changing.

Sure, the old cliché holds for the “first album in a while”: Alexisonfire leave where they left off with “Committed to the Con”, introducing Otherness with crunchy, mashing repetitive layers of guitar. George Pettit and Dallas Green’s vocals mix screaming and wailing, true force in numbers. Similarly, “Sweet Dreams of Otherness”, a purported mission statement for the band originally written by Green, doubles down on the band’s solid aesthetic: a contrast between melody in the vocals and the instrumentation’s hard edges, bludgeoning desert metal riffs and meaty drums. “Conditional Love” and “Reverse the Curse” could fit in nicely on past albums like Crisis or Old Crows / Young Cardinals. The latter’s main riff is actually from the original version of “Young Cardinals”, and it definitely sports a throwback feel, complete with a breakdown drum roll in the bridge back into the chorus.

Still, Alexisonfire find rooms for surprise in unexpected sources. The Wade MacNeil-penned “Sans Soleil” is a comparatively gentle dedication to someone who bolstered him during a period of self-loathing, written around the same time he was writing his very solid self-titled solo record as Dooms Children. “You loved me when I couldn’t love myself,” Green sings; the band’s choice to have the singer different from the writer is an effective reminder of the song’s universal themes. Meanwhile, bassist Chris Steele sees his writing debut on the sludgy “Blue Spade”, whose slow riffs and drum beats provide plenty of bedrock for inspired interplay between the band members’ vocal styles. “Mistaken Information” and “Survivor’s Guilt” both make good use of synth intros--ambient drone for the former, industrial zooms for the latter--before going diverging directions. The former is especially a balm, as Pettit and Green duet with clean vocals before the guitars in the bridge pierce and tremble their way out.

The most radically different song on the album in comparison to Alexisonfire’s back catalog is also its best, the closer “World Stops Turning”. After an acoustic guitar intro, we’re treated to 8 minutes of folk, psychedelia, and prog metal, guttural growls obscured by swirling noise, wordless vocal harmonies, and powerful riffing. “And if the world, the world stops turning / Our love will keep on burning,” they sing. Simple, but true, and these days, we can’t hear it enough.

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