It seems that whatever serial collaborators The Body touch results in some form of horrific gold. In this latest work, the band has once again teamed up with New York punks Uniform to create a haunting, industrial avant-garde tinged album. The mixing of the two bands styles on Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back isn’t something that is initially clear on the surface but as the album unfolds, the two bands begin to almost exist in the same musical space. This album follows on as a companion piece to 2018’s Mental Wounds Not Healing which saw the two bands working together for the first time. However, on Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back the record seems to touch more upon the idea of our own mortality and how we deal with our emotions.
Throughout the record there is a sense of abrasiveness which is twinned with melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place on a New Order record. On ‘Vacancy’ there is an almost disco feel to the drum melody, but what pulls it far from that world is the droning bass tone which sits below, bolstered by the instantly recognisable screeches of The Body vocalist Chip King. Where the album really begins to shows its strengths is in the way it strikes a balance between the vocal styles of The Body’s King and Uniform’s Michael Berdan’s. With dark industrial sounds propelling the rhythm along on most of the tracks tracks, it is the manner in which King and Berdan weave their voices into the songs to create stories that makes the songs stand out. This style is used perfectly on ‘Penance’ with King screaming over the darker elements of the song, only for Berdan to come in and, in unusual fashion for him, almost give the song an uplifting feeling.
For two bands that have forged their own path in the industrial metal world, this coming together has almost heightened the elements of their music which makes them unique. As far as collaborations go it seems that Uniform and The Body are a perfect fit for one another and this record is further evidence of that.
Everything That Dies Someday Comes back is released on 16th August via Sacred Bones and can be purchased here.
Words: Tim Birkbeck
