“Down on my knees, pray to the moonlight.”
It’s been over half a decade since Loathe’s sophomore smash, I Let It In And It Took Everything, took the world by storm. That’s a sentiment you’ll likely see strewn across the many reviews and thinkpieces that are bound to pop up, but I think it’s pertinent to remember that I Let it In… wasn’t an overnight success. In fact, it was mostly in those years following its release that the band’s presence truly started to take shape. Be that due to the right eyes befalling the group, or a certain World Event™ potentially holding up their momentum for a while shortly after the album’s release, it’s undeniable that their true launching off point, in which the record went from ‘cult classic’ to simply ‘classic’ status, came in the years following as Loathe started to breach new shores across the world in support of absolute goliaths like Korn, Gojira, Spiritbox, and soon to be Interpol.
All of this to say, it’s not like Loathe haven’t been busy, but even then, the promise of new music has existed since as early as 2022, and it’s certainly become more than a bit of an in-joke amongst alternative circles. This changed briefly in 2025 with the surprise release of “Gifted Every Strength”, which soon put to rest fears that Loathe simply were not coming back, or that their return wouldn’t quite reach the heights of their previous greats. “Gifted Every Strength” demonstrated Loathe at their very best, most sprawling and undeniably complex. Die-hard tech riff junkies might disagree with that notion, but to me, “Gifted Every Strength” represented everything I could’ve possibly wanted from a follow up to what is certainly one of my favourite albums of all time.
It was hard to know exactly what to expect from there, though. This seems to have been by design, as for a whole year beyond that point, our only other frame of reference for what we would later come to know as A Stranger To You, was through live performances of two new tracks: “ثينا” and “Revenant”, the latter of which features ex-Code Orange frontman Jami Morgan delivering one of his most venomous performances in some time. Two songs that were inextricably linked throughout live sets, but shared very little DNA sonically, with the former being a gorgeous, atmosphere soaked interlude, lined with glitzy synths and washy reverb; and the latter being one of the band’s most belligerent and groove-laden tracks to date.
Then came “Fangs”, a track so sublime and unique that it threw any and all (of the few remaining) preconceived notions I had about the record out in an instant. It seems almost redundant to make these comparisons for how broad-reaching they are, but the track’s Queens Of The Stone Age-meets-Prince-meets-Mastodon, all wrapped up in a veil of the hyper-modern, made for what has effortlessly landed in my top tracks of the year. It all feels so synergistic and natural too; far beyond what you’d expect from such a comparison on paper.
This push-and-pull sets the album up almost too well in a sense, as the moment-to-moment ebb and flow of A Stranger To You is equally as hard to pin down. Evidently keen to side step any notion of pigeonholing, Loathe’s third full-length effort is just as difficult to classify as one might have suspected from its lead up, and that’s entirely to its benefit.
A Stranger To You is self-evidently more keen on taking you on a journey than barraging you with a sequence of tracks with no defined purpose – something Loathe have oft honed in on in the past, but have never quite hit the mark as deftly as here. An album experience in the truest sense of the phrase, Loathe’s efforts to seamlessly blend their countless influences and styles across A Stranger To You is valiant and apparent from the album’s opening moments. Elements of EDM, noughties indie, pummelling industrial metalcore, and a certain je ne sais quoi of something quintessentially British about the whole ordeal, define the album’s opening moments beyond its smoky jazz-lounge introduction, and it sets up what’s to come in the most masterful way possible: by not letting you know its next move at any given moment.
One thing that makes itself readily apparent from the album’s opening stretch is just how cool the production on this thing is. Remarkably analogue for a band within their space, which of course was something explored on I Let It In…, but is certainly fully banked on here. Tight, jazzy drum sounds; Tangerine Dream-esque synth passages; and guitar tones so gnarly and fuzz-laden that it’d make even the most budding stoner metal fan wince. It all converges in such a wholly unique and fantastically realised manner, and feels truly considered as part of the album’s overall masterfully slick aesthetic.
This is all accented remarkably on each end of A Stranger To You’s brain-scramblingly broad sonic spectrum. The crushing, oppressive percussiveness of Meshuggah-fied single, “Revenant“, and the crushing soundtrack to a collapsing nightclub, “Gemini”, stand just as tall alongside the sun-soaked and hopeful “Fortress Down” and “Harder To Pretend”. There’s a dynamic range across A Stranger To You demonstrated across these stylististically juxtapositional moments that makes the whole thing all the more engaging as a result, and undeniably stellar in its execution.
That’s not even to mention the phenomenal guest musicians featured. Friend of the band bucki sugar provides potent spoken-word elements over the album’s introductory sequence and mid-point interlude; and Static Dress frontman Olli Appleyard brings the heat on early industrialised rager “Block Of Flats”. Perhaps the most mind-shattering of all the features, however, are the back-end inclusions of R&B multi-instrumentalist Mansur Brown on “The Way It Breaks”, and jazz-soul mastermind Jordan Rakei on “The Ladder”. The former of the two’s atmosphere-drenched sound proves a particular high point, but the latter of which stands tall as one of the utmost highlights across A Stranger To You, a record that certainly excels in its lack of any apparent dips in quality, potentially dethroning 2020’s “Is It Really You?” as the most gorgeous track Loathe have penned to date in the process.
Throughout all these wild energetic peaks and valleys, it’s easy to question how something so varied can flow without feeling stilted. Thankfully, this is certainly one of A Stranger To You’s strongest assets. There are so many moments that allow you to drink in and process its most dense and challenging moments; be that through a brief synth interlude or a quiet ushering at either end of a track, there’s this space to breathe across A Stranger To You that serves to only bolster the album’s most mind-blowing moments by allowing the listener to ruminate and digest them before throwing them back in for another round.
The final stretch of the record continues to throw curveball after curveball, truly requiring and excelling through these these sparse moments of reprieve. “Meet My Maker” feels like a cross between Baby D, The Prodigy and, once again, Queens Of The Stone Age, to make for a track that’s as noisy and fuzzy as it is danceable. Amen breaks line the track’s Y2K-angled verses; while its soaring, slick chorus and schizophrenic breakdown inject some elements that feel both classically and contemporaneously Loathe. The aforementioned singles “Fangs” and “Gifted Every Strength” also continue to stand out as harbouring some of the most wildly creative and left-field songwriting decisions this band have made yet, and the newly-affixed acoustic postlude on the album version of “Gifted Every Strength” provides only more sombre beauty before ushering in the album’s closer.
As the album’s almost-eponymous track, “No Stranger To You…”, draws to a close, there’s this sense of hope that truly comes to a head as the album parts ways with the listener. It’s an undercurrent that lines most of the record, particularly in its glitzy and sentimental back half, and it feels wonderfully realised by those closing moments. Effectively communicated and wonderfully realised through the album’s masterful aesthetic identity, it’s a moment that rings as truly emotionally present; both in its lyrics and sonic makeup.
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that what Loathe have crafted with A Stranger To You is unlike anything else that’s come before it. An adoring and bombastic amalgamation of influences far and wide, all implemented into one cohesive and undeniably masterful project that stands entirely in a league of its own, it’s truly remarkable. Comparison is the thief of joy, and to Loathe’s credit, A Stranger To You is an incomparably joyous collection of some of the most enthralling music modern metal (and alternative music as a whole) has to offer.
Six years on from their seminal sophomore record, Loathe have sought to answer the all-too-heavy question of how exactly you’re meant to follow up a record as generationally prescient as I Let It In And It Took Everything. While we may never know the minutiae of what happened in the years since that led to A Stranger To You’s late arrival, one thing’s for certain: this album sounds like it took time to craft. Meticulous, sprawling, beautiful, and at times oppressively crushing; the Liverpool quartet’s latest foray is one of, if not the most deeply engaging metal record of the decade thus far, and proves that the genius of their prior greats was far from a fluke – even if it took half a decade to find the words.
