They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to OPEN THIS FUCKING PIT UP, and to that end that’s how we get projects like Anyo. Memorrhage were an enthralling romp of mine last year with their sugary sci-fi ode to nu metal, a time warp for the ’90s kids out there who owned Korn‘s Follow The Leader on compact disc and really liked Fred Durst’s swag in the “Break Stuff” music video. For a solo project, it was passionate, the nostalgia boosted up to über levels like you were playing SSX Tricky and made palatable for a new, curious audience as well. In short, a fun throwback, but indicative of so much more.
Anyo‘s here now, the follow-up to the project’s self-titled debut and ain’t shit changed almost to a fault. Almost. In many ways, it’s a logical step forward, packing almost as many pals as the last album did helping out with anything from turntables to vocals to noise and electronics. It’s a busy project, but one scaled back in some key ways in the name of balance. Where Memorrhage was more focused on the hard, heavier groove aspects of nu metal and adjacent flavors, Anyo‘s more immediately melodic and playful with space.
One very noticeable change in this direction is the bigger presence of clean vocals. While Memorrhage mastermind Garry Brents and his friends still shred their throats enough to keep Ricola and honey businesses up and running, others butter up their vocal chords to mesh melodious beauty with the dystopic hells Anyo‘s songs portray. The first two tracks, “Downstone” and “Infect”, build to cool moments like these, flanked by steely, dank, apocalyptic instrumentation that sounds like something from the Killing Floor franchise (love those games). It’s futuristic but destitute, like an advanced society long since decimated by any manner of threat. In fact, because that’s more of the primary tone of the music, the melodic elements end up sounding more eerie and ghostly than anything else. For instance, the haunting delivery of ‘There’s a hole that’s everything/There’s a hole that’s you and me‘ at the end of “Infect” is way more creepy than how those lines are delivered in the hook in gritted Corey Taylor fashion.
This is all combined with some shiny chiptune-esque elements and electronic accouterments like in “Structural Damage Capacity”, about a failed recon and recovery mission by mech pilots to save people and artifacts from destruction. These are the sort of things that make the theming of Anyo hit just as hard as it did on Memorrhage. It’s an anthology of violence, cosmic and body horror, of melted and blended realities that shouldn’t exist. One of my favorite tracks is “Removal Process” which is about the Stroggification process in Quake lore, effectively an extreme cybernetic augmentation usually performed against people’s will to build a cyborg alien army called the Strogg. There’s shrill screams and more modulated voices to capture the horrific process, a job seemingly more fit for death metal, but the pummel of the drums and groove of the guitars build an atmosphere that feels just as off-putting and dingy as any back-alley Cannibal Corpse song, maybe more so.
Overall, I did have slightly more fun with Memorrhage‘s self-titled album – I miss the prominent scratching from Mr. Rager, but you can hear Captain Dugog‘s more subtle approach over a few tracks, you just have to listen a bit closer. I miss the wholesale aggression and speed of the first album (nothing grips quite like “Memory Leak” or “Exit” did), but it’s not completely absent here. I like “Dive” for A) being about merpeople protecting their oceans from humans that tread too far out and in to sea (we’d totally colonize the ocean if we could), and B) having some bona fide double bass drums for maximum metal mashing and an overall action-oriented, combative tone. The little drum and bass rhythm that sneaks into the middle of the track like it did on last LP’s “Old Wave” is cute too. “In Sero” has catchy, low-ass guitars paired with both barely audible, sludge-coated vocals and a soaring chorus that’s straight out of 2000s radio metal. “Anywhere Else” has an intro that reminds me of early Dååth, like “Dead on the Dance Floor” with the staccato notes or even something off of their first album Futility.
Little gripes aside, Anyo is still a nu metal triumph, far from vacuous, cheaper revivals of this sort of sound that you’d expect to hear from the concept alone. As before, Memorrhage is built from passion, not so much the chasing of a nostalgic cash-in which, perhaps ironically, makes it more worth your monetary support than most. It was risky too – although friendlier melodies and cleaner elements were always a stalwart part of the nu metal we heard growing up, Euro stepping into it with your second album is definitely a choice and fans of that approach will no doubt find Anyo the one to beat. If you want it rougher and rawer though, there’s still plenty here to weigh you down like your old pair of JNCO jeans did when the pant legs got wet.
