- Punk rock kings from over the pond, the excellently named God Bows To Math have returned to follow up their 2011 self-titled record with Brighter Futures. Having fairly relentlessly toured their home country and Australia in the time between that release and the present, the band have built a reputation as a powerful live force.
Brighter Futures marks a slight change in focus for the band in relation to their debut – where that album was the product of a noise-rock band that rode the edge between tightness and running off the rails, the new release moves God Bows into more post-punk territory. It’s a small distinction, but important – the difference between the two approaches is that of discipline and space. While Brighter Futures retains the band’s signature brutality and in-your-face nature, it offers those moments up in a more measured fashion, using repetition or more ambient sections as downtime to make the unhinged sections hit even harder. Opener ‘1999: Doomsday’ is all washes of sparse guitar and an insistent rhythm section that builds for its first three quarters before finally exploding in its final minute. Even then, though, the band hold things back for a bit, with the vocals starting out as a multi-tracked wisp behind the thrashing band before larynxes are finally shredded in the final seconds. Later on ‘Moral Prophylaxis’ follows a similar formula, but to a more extreme result. Even the more high-tempo songs offer moments of reflections to provide contrast.
While the performances are fairly uniformly intense, sonically the band have cleaned things up a bit from their debut. Each instrument has its own piece of sonic real estate, and bright reverbs give things a hyper-realistic sense of ambience. Sometimes the effect can be a bit like the uncanny valley, though, with songs that would probably benefit from a bit of a layer of grit instead seeming fractionally anaemic (for example, the otherwise raucous ‘Got Art?’). Elsewhere the presentation provides strong songs a layer that might not otherwise exist, such as the sense of grandeur invested into the shapeshifting but otherwise economical ‘High Strings’ through just a smattering of delayed guitar. On the closer ‘Oil Of Vitriol’ the effect is definitely beneficial, with an unrelenting groove underpinning a murky wash of droning guitars and skronking saxophone. It all gets a bit Laughing Clowns, and that’s a good thing. It’s the furthest God Bows push themselves from their core sound on Brighter Futures, and it ends being probably the best song on the record.
Brighter Futures may well be an angry, sarcastic comment on societal ills (previously released single ‘The Only Good Fnord Is A Dead Fnord’ talks about “right wing commentators” and “an impending sense of dread”), but as a record it’s a breakneck yet constantly shifting 30 minutes of vibrant punk rock.
- Cam Smith.