✦✦✦✧ ETID is as vital and imaginative as ever on this album, but this time around their mathy metalcore maelstrom feels more political than I recall them being before, in ways both overt and subtle. The album is chock full of pleasing surprises and upheavals. The whole band sound great, but special props to vocalist Keith Buckley, whose range is as impressive as his commitment to every style he reaches for, and to newcomer Goose Holyoak on drums, fresh off a few years with my other fave metalcore standardbearers Norma Jean.

✦✦✦✧ Here’s a grungier, even nastier (if you can believe it) ETID album. Less overly metal, but just as twisted and angry. There are palpable traces of QOTSA and Clutch all over the Converge-ish core of the band’s music. There’s also an almost Beatles-esque listenability in the melodies that surprised me… and ETID surprising me just shows that they’ve still got it.

★★★☆ While this is still very recognizably ETIDcore, they have somehow permuted the goofiness of “Ex Lives” for a more focused, surprising, and interesting sophistication on this album. None of the band’s aggression of missing; instead, they let in a little seawater for extra flavor. The result is an album that more or less works, and works hard, for its incendiary 31 minutes.