It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that we over here at Everything Is Noise – yours truly especially – adore boundaryless artistry in all of its possible forms. While we always welcome the newcomers and first-timers around these perimeters, we also keep a close eye on all of those whose doings should be monitored in a keen manner. With some of them, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with on multiple occasions with no end in sight, and it is always a pleasure to offer a platform for these people. It’s almost as if meeting up with an old friend, given that the concept of friendship in this context is more of a ‘you do something and I talk about it‘ kind of an affair. Today, we’re exploring one such case.
At this point I’ve lost count about how many times I’ve written about Mark Solotroff, his WFA piece probably being the most important one, but as far as Anatomy of Habit as a band goes, I’ve only touched on the subject briefly. So what better way to amend that than to give you the full premiere of this post-punk/industrial/doom/psychedelic/shoegaze conglomerate’s new album Paired Sentinels right here, right now. So, put on your listening equipment, make room for the next 43 minutes or so, prepare to be thoroughly smitten, and proceed to hit play from below;
The Chicago-based quintet has been carving their own path through the figurative noise since their formation in 2008, albeit the members have made quite significant strides in their respective fields already decades prior. That said, Anatomy of Habit excels as its own thing and inhabits its own sonic space entirely, as a gathering of compositionally and visionally intelligent gentlemen, whose fifth album, and third with this line-up, Paired Sentinels is indeed available for engorging above and officially out tomorrow.
The band’s history is a streamlined evolution where an insane amount of different angles conjoin to one poignant and incredibly acute entity, and the four new songs are monolithic testaments to the fact. As their current line-up is also the longest standing one, the idea of progress and digging deeper into what makes Anatomy of Habit tick so efficiently is driven home, to deserved applause. While I’ve enjoyed their doings previously as well to a great degree, Paired Sentinels feels like an elevation of sorts, on multiple layers. Dynamically rich and thematically pertinent, especially the longer songs “Conditions For Freedom” and the titular track bear immense weight and provide enough details for you to obsess over for ages.
Even though Paired Sentinels bursts by the seams with the industrial galore and harshness, there’s also a fair amount of the positive type of airiness to it, and at times the mass reaches a critical point after which even the sky isn’t the limit. Those moments define Anatomy of Habit as a whole, and here they’re offered in near-egregious fashion. I must say that the noisier department, and especially the percussions seem to cut through a lot in a very palpable way, both for their own as well as the entirety’s benefit of course. There’s simply so much to bite into, that I’m probably just better off by saying that Paired Sentinels is a damn joy to listen to, and that is all there is to it.
So, hop on over to Anatomy of Habit‘s Bandcamp page to order the new record and be mindful of the fact that the vinyl comes with a bonus 7″ consisting of two instrumental tracks Solotroff devised together from rehearsal recordings. Once you’ve done that, go hit those follow buttons on the band’s Instagram and Facebook pages to stay on top of all future things concerning them. Meanwhile I’ll take this bad boy for another run.
