BETTER LOVERS – Highly Irresponsible

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7.0

• Bands:
  BETTER LOVERS
• Duration: 00:34:57
• Available from: 10/25/2024
• Label:

• Sharptone Records

Every Time I Die, after an extraordinary career dotted with albums that made history, found a sudden and unworthy end at the beginning of 2022. Until the release of their ninth album, “Radical”, there were no signs of crisis , but in a short time the situation degenerated: first the stop of frontman Keith Buckley, who decided to take a break for mental health reasons, then a disastrous separation, marked by fiery arguments on social media.
Founding guitarist Andy Williams took the opportunity to dedicate himself full-time to a career as a wrestler ('The Butcher' wrestled in the famous federations AEW and ROH), while Jordan Buckley (guitarist and Keith's brother), Stephen Micciche (bass) and Clayton 'Goose' Holyoak (drums) have decided to continue with a new moniker, Better Lovers, focusing on two aces up their sleeves that have attracted everyone's attention: guitarist Will Putney, leader of Fit, has in fact joined the project For An Autopsy and producer of numerous records of the scene, and the vocalist Greg Puciato, known for his past in The Dillinger Escape Plan, but also as a soloist and voice of projects such as Killer Be Killed and Jerry Cantrell.
“30 Under 13”, the first single released by the group, showed how the groove, dissonant riffs and feral aggression lived in a new creature, so the short EP “God Made Me An Animal” satisfied everyone a bit , continuing on the ETID trajectory without too many surprises.
The first official album arrives today, determined to broaden the EP experience and provide an appropriate dose to the quintet's hungry supporters: it is implicit that from the caliber of the names involved you can't go wrong with practically nothing, so here we are again with a lot of quality without nothing innovative or disruptive.
Puciato slurs and growls over fast scores, jagged punk chords and pumped, dissonant guitar riffs, among which those of “Future Myopia” and “Drowning in a Burning World” stand out for their intensity. An exhilarating chaos, but at times also tiring and an end in itself, so much so that the feeling emerges that the difference between the songs is often attributable to how much the Better Lovers are pressing on the accelerator.
So the more melodic moments in a certain sense stand out from the rest, such as “At All Times” and its echoes of Black Stone Cherry, a “Deliver Us From Life” influenced by the recent collaboration between Puciato and Cantrell or “Love As An Act Of Rebellion” , the closing anthem that contains emotionally charged parts in addition to the usual bursts of energy.
An element that is missing, for those who would expect it from the former ETIDs, is the southern component that has characterized their sound for years. On a lyrical level, Buckley and co push strongly on nihilism, with songs like “Drowning In A Burning World” and “Superman Died Paralyzed”, even if Puciato, despite being an extraordinary singer, does not always manage to shine as a lyricist, with numerous repetitions which water down the texts.
Judging “Highly Irresponsible” means answering the questions about how correct it is to take this good thing for granted and how right it is to expect more from a team of champions: the results are there, live the songs will take their best form and with over time the training will probably be able to improve.
The best days of these fantastic musicians are not behind them, thankfully, but the belief that the best is yet to come leaves us somehow hungry for the next evolutions of the band.