The Armed
Perfect Saviors
SARGENT HOUSE
Earlier this year, an NYU psychology study showed that in a matter of five seconds, music listeners decide whether a song is their jam or not. That could be a saddening confirmation for many musicians—particularly of the jazz and prog-rock variety—that they’re up against the wall with the masses because they worship technique. But this “five-second” theory seems to be of decreasing concern to The Armed.
As the long-running and shape-shifting post-hardcore band from Detroit proves on Perfect Saviors, The Armed do, in fact, need just five seconds to win over listeners who gravitate toward quality noise-pop. Beyond that, though, they also expertly—at a moment’s notice, if you will—take sharp right turns in rhythm, timing, and song structure. Those riffs and fills also need less than five seconds to sink in their claws. The album’s teeth-grindingly glorious grooves are only outdone by the coherence that the experimental collective has managed to forge for itself. (The album’s extensive list of guest performers—Jacob Bannon of Converge, Julien Baker, Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens of the Stone Age, among many more—deserves notice, too.)
It’s as if The Armed make their decisions on where to take a song not based on what might make the most sense on paper, but what makes the most sense when they listen to their heart. It’s the best possible outcome for a band that balances six members, and it befits most of the 12 songs on Perfect Saviors. On the topic of balance, The Armed also make changing genre at a moment’s notice look easy. While the band has a punk-rock through line, it’s not uncommon for them to radically shift into poppier territory (particularly on the breezy “FKA World”), suddenly sound like The Strokes in one minute (the middle section of “Vatican Under Construction”), Dillinger Escape Plan (“Sport of Form”) in the next, Muse (“Burned Mind”) in the one after that, and then Zeal & Ardor (“Modern Vanity”).
The Armed’s Achilles heel, though, is that despite being pros at staying busy and never sitting still, once they run out of gas, their songs contain just a flicker, not a flame. After the band raises the bar over and over again during the first half of the record, its last few songs start dimming the lights. “Liar 2” pales in comparison to the nine tunes that came before it. “In Heaven,” a soft lullaby, can feel repetitive. “Public Grieving” doesn’t take chances—The Armed’s calling card. They clearly relish making songs that are magically and endemically incongruous, but don’t have any illusions left at the end of Perfect Saviors.
Still, even with that minor dent, The Armed’s Perfect Saviors is a catchy, creativity-crammed vehicle worth driving off the lot.
