“They will tell you who they see / but you know who you are.”
When judging a band’s status, it’s easy to forget how many rabbit holes we live down. Pupil Slicer’s 2021 debut record Mirrors was certainly a pandemic break-out, landing at a time when the arenas made for chaotic hardcore music were shuttered. They’ve since gained more momentum, playing larger stages, clashing with Opeth at ArcTangent 22, and touring with sonic titans Boris. They’re certainly recognised as a key name in modern mathcore, alongside acts like The Callous Daoboys, Frontierer, and Every Time I Die. As major as they might seem, one hopes they haven’t hit their ceiling. It’s time to wonder how much bigger they could become.
Pupil Slicer began the Blossom album cycle with its title track as the brilliant lead single, turning heads with its surprising melodicism and prompting much speculation on how the album would turn out. This track was not a fluke: the record Blossom is a stylistic shift. Pupil Slicer’s average intensity is still ridiculous, but there’s space now for catchy moments, genre diversions, and epic tracks not seen on Mirrors. That record was a deliberately disjointed, but Blossom is a journey with distinct purpose. Interviews with the band have confirmed it’s a deeply conceptual album. And apparently? It’s about Nietzsche and Final Fantasy XIV. Let’s fucking go.
Examining this album in a track-by-track form is necessary, so strap in. Side one of Blossom is a tightly coupled set of five tracks. “Glaring Dark of Night” is the mood-setting overture, introducing a piano theme for later referencing (“Chekov’s riff”, if you will). “Momentary Actuality” is a fantastic place to truly start the record, and was released as the third single. The Slicer carnage begins with blast beats, bewitching semi-harsh-vocals, a tempo switch, and, at a minute in, the album’s first chorus. It’s certainly Pupil Slicer’s most melodic moment, and it’s so satisfying, particularly when the riff repeats under blast beats. The second verse repeats no musical ideas from the first, producing many more headbanging moments. The established chorus returns in a slick transition, repeating again as the rhythms continually switch to inject more and more urgency. Josh Andrew’s drumming is the real bedrock of Blossom. It’s terrifyingly technical, yet working to keep you, personally, in the groove, so that you can nod along despite the underlying time signature sorcery. “Momentary Actuality”’s final outro is the record’s first breakdown – complex, doom-laden and malicious. It’s certainly the track to try out first, as it crystallises all of what Pupil Slicer are doing on Blossom.
“Departure in Solitude” and “Creating the Devil in Our Image” are the two most “Slicer” tracks on Blossom that I expect to hear no complaints about – furious, technical, and full of spicy ideas. In “Departure…”, electronic elements herald infectious groove after groove, several “black metal” riffs, a hardcore break, and a demented screechy outro. “Creating…” is more dynamic, and has plenty of delicious bass, dual-vocal moments (cleans over harsh), and a titanic ending (“A monument to everything you would have been”).
The side ends with the ultimate “The Song At Creation’s End”, a strong contender for metal song of the year. In its first five minutes, it’s a mix between ballad and tragedy. Clean guitar passages open the track, developing a tense, Deafheaven-like vibe. A mix of intensely sad, yet blast-beat laden prog metal ensues, with pianos joining at the most emotional moment. And then the coolest thing happens that I can only describe in one way – it’s that moment when a live band finishes a slower track, allows for brief applause, then drops their fastest, sickest riff, and the whole room erupts. “The Song At Creation’s End” performs this magic trick in the studio at 4:40, a timestamp for unhinged jaws, where both guitarist conjure a swaggering rhythm made for pit violence. The band take a roundabout route back to that epic mood established in the middle of the song, but the emotional context is different. The final moments are spent with a weeping sample, or perhaps the end of a passionate vocal take – and it doesn’t feel at all hyperbolic.
Side one makes for a tough act to follow, but things move from strength to strength with mathcore single “No Temple”. It incorporates a few breakbeats, and a pulsing rhythm within the vocals and riffs to grounds the track, despite its rampant chaos. “No Temple” has time signatures switches you could trip you over, but also one of the most anti-intellectual, title-dropping breakdowns I’ve ever heard – pure squealy pinch harmonics from every guitar, turning a screw in your brain as their pitch tightens. “Terminal Lucidity” is a less significant song, only in that the tracks that surround it are so pivotal, but it’s a good story in and of itself: it starts quiet with glitchy ambience, and develops into a short mathcore track that blends together harsh and clean vocals.
The final three songs are difficult to examine separately. A much needed interlude, “Language of the Stars” is an ambient cut led by dark keys. A drum groove rises from the mist, guitar joins, and one begins to think the track might go off, like “Terminal Lucidity” just before. Instead, the gentle “Dim Morning Light” begins, which re-interprets the now distant melodies of the overture “Glaring Dark of Night”. It becomes a prog metal song with hazy shoegaze passages, where Davies’ various vocal styles impart a peculiar mood that sets the track apart from most atmospheric metal. As the second longest track, it’s an ambitious winding tale without the high-tempo theatrics expected from Pupil Slicer. This will surely make it a divisive cut, but I’d gladly hear a whole album in this style. “Dim Morning Light”’s uncertain ending runs naturally into “Blossom”, turning the atmosphere toward determination.
Concept album enjoyers should note the album somewhat being a cycle from the opener “Glaring Dark of Night” to the penultimate “Dim Morning Light”. This makes the finale “Blossom” some sort of “true” ending, if we follow the hinted video game theme to its bitter end. It opens on an initially straightforward riff and clean vocal passage, something a more average heavy band might write on a good day. A minute in, there’s a fun transition: three claps encourage a gnarly bass solo, leading back to a mix of clean and rasped vocals. Each of these vocal parts repeats and becomes catchy in their own way, as if the track has three choruses to choose from. Later on one of the albums few guitar solos is spat out by Frank Muir. Whilst the track’s final chorus is immensely gratifying, “Blossom”’s true magnetism comes from its complexity. There’s only a few mathcore twists, but the songwriting approach is unlike other more melodic bands.
It would easy to write off the melodic moments that populate Blossom as a rejection of their established heaviness. But the band aren’t really trading harsh for clean, and the writing isn’t trying to be pop. The catchiest vocal lines are in long choruses, and Kate Davies’ androgynous vocal delivery is continually crafty – in fact, it might take you a few spins to adjust to the myriad of vocal styles at play here. Additionally, many of the heavy passages feel as though they were written to fit the vocal lines, not the other way round, as is more common in technical metal. The accessibility of Blossom is also thanks to its mix, which is very strong. The most significant upgrade over Mirrors, or the bridging single “Thermal Runway”, is the reined-in low end. The bass is now tidy and crisp, with the ever present slap of Luke Fabian’s bass coming through even the most sonically densest moments. There’s lots of bold synths on Blossom that sound “sci-fi” yet avoid sounding corny.
I’m enamoured by Blossom, and hopefully you are now too after reading this review, but given the stylistic shift I do wonder how its reception will pan out. Clean vocals, long songs, choruses, and interludes. For me, none of these are derogatory and it all works well, particularly as the meandering passages making up the lengthy tracks give us so much to unpack. Whilst they are not identical bands, I can’t help but think of the two Dillinger Escape Plan eras (pre and post Calculating Infinity) – everyone’s got a favourite and ultimately it’s all brilliant music, but the comparative debates drone ever on. Divisive as it might become, Blossom is the career defining record that even a die hard fan like me could not have expected. Here’s hoping it propels Pupil Slicer to new heights.
9/10
Blossom releases on 2nd June through Prosthetic Records can be pre-ordered here (EU), here (UK), and here (US).