Squid "O Monolith" Review
From the initial moments of lead single and opening track “Swing (Inside A Dream)”, Squid’s second album O Monolith feels utterly and beautifully cataclysmic. Immediately immersive, the UK band’s sophomore LP is bursting with a genuinely palpable and inescapable tension. The push and pull between this tension and the resulting perfectly executed exercises in controlled chaos that follow is the band’s bread and butter here, and “Swing” is the perfect introduction to an absolute behemoth of a record that does everything in its power to live up to its name.
“Swing (Inside A Dream)” may be the most conventional song on the entire record - and the only instance of Squid coming close to a traditional song structure throughout O Monolith’s 42 minute runtime. The verses are equal parts brooding and inviting, and flow seamlessly into the biggest hook on the album. This song serves as a highly palatable introduction to the band’s biting blend of math rock and post-punk, with yelled vocals ushering in an absolutely massive and crushing final bridge, setting the table for the rest of the record’s many emotional and impressive dynamic shifts.
No example of these immense dynamic shifts is as impressive as “Devil’s Den”. Much of this song is incredibly restrained, opening with dueling guitar arpeggios that seem to be hiding some sort of secret agenda. The song lulls the listener into a false sense of security with its initial beauty, before exploding into one of the most crushing moments on the record without any semblance of a warning. One of the most surprising dynamic shifts in recent memory, and the band pulls it off with flying colors.
The following track “Siphon Song” is a meandering and expansive roughly six minute crescendo, which serves as the backdrop to vocals processed through a vocoder to the point where they almost don’t sound human any longer. Additional vocal tracks in the background give the song theatrical overtones, while the track gradually builds to a perfectly mixed wall of sound that never loses clarity as it steadily grows to monumental proportions.
“Undergrowth” is carried by a tight hypnotic drum and bass groove that continues throughout its entirety. Dancing overtop this groove is an infectious, jangly, and angular guitar riff that is so strangely catchy; and an eerie synth line that adds a sense of darkness that is truly mesmerizing. The song then transitions to a true ear worm hook that any other band would have made into the focal point of the track, but Squid decides to leave it be and explore what else this song could accomplish in its impressively engaging nearly seven minutes.
The unorthodox “The Blades” is next, and its mechanical-yet-musical percussive samples add an interesting texture to the mix. The guitars in this song are jaw-droppingly beautiful and serene amidst a horde of other sounds, right before the song takes a turn towards the climactic. A deafening wall of sound is built upon before disappearing as soon as it began, and the rest of “The Blades” is spent with gentle guitars and a vulnerable vocal performance that needs to be heard to be believed.
“After The Flash” has such tight rhythms that there’s a percussive quality to every aspect of the instrumental. Yet somehow, the subdued and smooth vocals glide over these strange rhythms with ease, pulling this otherwise machine-tight number back into the realm of humanity. There is a brief reprieve given by a synth break halfway through, before the band comes back into frame - locked back into the rhythmic groove explored by the first half of the song. This time, the song builds and builds, adding in shrieking backing vocals that somehow sound equal parts melodic and out of a horror movie score. The song ends with these screams over the instrumental collapsing in on itself in truly one of the most memorable moments on the album.
The album closes with “Green Light” and “If You Had Seen The Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away”, the former of which jumps between energetic and dissonant verses and a reserved and smooth hook that serves as a bit of a musical oasis before the chaotic verse comes back as suddenly as it entered. Somehow, these verses are not the highest energy moments the track has to offer, as its bridge is just immense. The final track on the album contains the most unsettling vocals present in the track listing with the whispered sections the first half of the song provides. Between the horns and the additional vocals, the extra instrumentation on this song is something to behold. In fitting fashion, O Monolith spends its final moments with one last horrific burst of energy before disappearing as abruptly as it started.
With O Monolith, Squid have released the first perfect album of 2023. A masterpiece in its own right, this album showcases the band at their most unapologetically weird, and the results are as captivating as they are occasionally alarming. This is the sound of a band solidifying their sound and pushing it forward in the way that feels most natural, and the results are nothing short of astonishing.
9/10
