Middlenamekill are a band waiting for a bigger stage. You can hear it in their music, music crafted for anthemic launch pads and stadium broadcasts – big songs looking for a big space to call home. Even when you watch the band in the small club environs that they currently ply their trade, it is easy to see the glint of something majestic, soaring and boundless at the heart of their music. But capturing that feeling on a studio recording is never an easy task.
Not easy, but not impossible either and they have done a great job in harnessing the sweeping grandeur of the music and tying it down to the recorded medium. An album forged of perfect musical collisions; angular guitars crashing through melodic backdrops, staccato patterns poised above more conventional musical safety nets and with the ability to exercise the full gamut of sharp dynamic expression from hammering riffs and ear-pleasing gang vocals to hushed atmospherics and understated interludes.
The great thing about the band, and therefore the album, is its ability to meander across genres without fully committing to any one and thereby keeping their musical fan base options open. Big rock swagger is tempered by mathy moments and some wonderfully experimental, prog like interludes, indie elements and choruses built from pure ear-wormery. The songs are clever enough to appeal to the more discerning rock fan and accessible enough to catch a more mainstream wave. If ever a band was designed for success in the stadium environment, Middlenamekill is it, there is still a long way to go but imagine the fun you could have watching them get there. Hold on it’s going to be one hell of a ride.
