This week I have new releases from Laura Mvula, Fear Factory, and Ciccada! One’s good, one’s bad, and one’s the same is it ever was and always will be. Oh man, the suspense!

Laura Mvula – Pink Noise
(July 2, 2021)

I don’t know anything about Laura Mvula’s previous output, but everything I’ve read suggests that Pink Noise is a radical departure. The British R&B/soul artist’s third album is awash in the kind of glossy ’80s disco synths, funky beats, and synthetic handclaps that bring to mind the likes of Prince and Michael Jackson with elements of James Brown and Whitney Houston and even that Phil Collins motherfucker. Pink Noise could have been a long-lost artifact recorded in 1985 that was just discovered this summer. Hell, even the lyrical themes are sickeningly fantastical and replete with doe-eyed, naïve wonderment (“Don’t let go of the magic/This is everything worth fighting for/More than you ever could imagine/I can see you through that open door“). The track “What Matters” is ESPECIALLY cheesily romantic. The male vocal contrast from featured guest Simon Neil (from Biffy Clyro) makes the song thick with an impenetrable layer of syrupy retro goodness. My preferred tracks are the final two of the album: “Got Me” is where Mvula channels her inner non-molesting version of Michael Jackson to a T, and “Before the Dawn” is just an ultra-shiny danceclub cooldown before she drives her Pontiac Firebird into the sunset.

A few good spins of Pink Noise reveals the undeniable tightness of the songwriting, even to the biggest ’80s pop skeptic (me). An album like this transcends the cookie-cutter mass marketed synthwave genre because of the goddamn soul. There’s soul in this album, and that’s the biggest thing going for Mvula by taking the chance on the ’80s pop throwback angle.

It sounds like Mvula had been dropped by Sony in 2017 and her path to Atlantic Records had been fraught with uncertainty. I hope she finds new comfort going forward, because she’s very talented. Everyone went gaga for Jessie Ware’s 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure?, but I find Pink Noise to be exactly what I wish Ware’s album was.

Early Verdict:

Fear Factory – Aggression Continuum
(June 18, 2021)

Ah, good old reliable Fear Factory. After their longest break ever between releases, the band finally dropped their tenth studio album Aggression Continuum after a few years of tension among its members and unclear financial legal issues. Even though lead vocalist Burton C. Bell had left the band in late 2020 due to interpersonal band politics, his vocals were recorded in 2017 and, therefore, used on this album. This makes it the identical line-up from their 2015 album Genexus, and the music is almost identical in every conceivable way as well.

Kudos to Fear Factory, that’s how you get the high ratings from all those online metal publications! Stick to a formula forever and you’ll never ever dip below 8/10, proving time and time again that the metal community is one big circlejerk retreat in the circlejerk woods. Aggression Continuum is a perfectly fine album in a vacuum, but I personally get bored when aging musicians put no effort into expanding their sound past the confines of the thimble-sized boundaries they created for themselves decades ago. There’s ten tracks here and I think every single one of them has the exact same chorus melody? It’s 2021, what’s the point of albums like these anymore?

This is a fantastic entry-level record for your rebellious 12-year-old nephew who wants to break into inoffensive industrial groove metal without scouring the old stuff first. This is also a fantastic record for people who have been with Fear Factory since the ’90s are just happy that a band they love is still making the same records over and over again. For me, and anyone else, it’s a hard pass.

Early Verdict:

Ciccada – Harvest
(April 23, 2021)

Yeah, no thanks. Ciccada makes exactly the kind of modern patchwork progressive rock that borrows elements from ’70s prog rock bands without adding anything new to the table whatsoever. The fluttering flute work of Jethro Tull, the tense synthetic organ of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the male/female vocal interplay of Renaissance, the folky decadence of Gryphon, the eclectic song arrangements of Gentle Giant. It’s all thrown together into a giant pot on the stove without the burners on, and the only thing Ciccada does is mix it with a spoon for 48 minutes. They add nothing to the recipe to make it their own signature concoction. Why would they? They have a fraction of the talent in the first place. They leave me completely underwhelmed and cynical.

I wouldn’t have a major problem with an album like Harvest if the music also didn’t feel like a fresh product off the prog rock assembly line. Production is immaculate, the singing is pristine, the instruments are all in perfect tune, the arrangements are all spick-and-span, there’s not a wrinkle, a speck of dust, a defect to be found anywhere. Sterile as sterile can be. Nothing outstanding, nothing innovative, nothing truly mentally stimulating. No point. Even if there was a shred of unpolished rawness or some truly dissonant dissonance (and not just a couple seconds here and there of fake, innocuous dissonance), it would have some character to it. But it doesn’t. I hate it.

I don’t know what mood I’d have to be in to ever appreciate this kind of prefab progressive rock, but it would be nice if I could get an appreciation for it. There’s enough of these albums out there to fill a Montana-sized landfill, I’d be set for life.

Early Verdict: