Better Lovers
Highly Irresponsible
SHARPTONE
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Can you think of any recent band breakups that were more publicly acrimonious than that of Every Time I Die? For those who missed it, at the end of 2021 the mercurial metalcore giants imploded in spectacular—and, for fans, heartbreaking—fashion. A succession of convoluted events and conflicting, accusatory statements reached Oasis levels of spite and messiness (ETID were, coincidentally, also led by two brothers). It was a depressing end to an all-time great heavy band, yet their suddenly deceased corpse was never destined to rot. Frontman Keith Buckley formed Many Eyes, who released an album of, let’s call it, mixed quality at the start of September. Meanwhile, three other ETID members reconvened to do what they do better than practically anyone else out there: write killer riffs.
But this only tells part of the story. ETID’s shadow looms large over Better Lovers, but the band is completed by two equally experienced musicians: frontman Greg Puciato (formerly of boundary pushing greats The Dillinger Escape Plan) and guitarist Will Putney (producer extraordinaire and member of Fit for an Autopsy and END). In short: if you’re into a certain branch of heavy music, Better Lovers are the ultimate supergroup. Their effortlessly great debut Highly Irresponsible feels like it was made by a veteran band because, in a Frankensteinian sense, that’s exactly what Better Lovers is. The record’s musical intricacy, synchronicity, and audacious flourishes are thrillingly free from insecurities. If anything, Highly Irresponsible is defined by its manic bravura, a head-spinning and accelerationist technica, and a unique intensity. Its breathless riffs and ferocious pace feel like a band desperate to escape their history.
The instantly recognizable, Escher-like riffs from ETID’s Jordan Buckley are these 10 tracks’ foundations (see the up-and-down ad-infinitum chords of “Your Misplaced Self” and the panic breakdown that closes “Superman Died Paralyzed”). Fittingly, given ETID and Dillinger’s propensity to endlessly surprise with newfound angles of heaviness, the strongest tracks on Highly Irresponsible are two of the most strikingly different cuts to the rest of the technical-math carnage. “At All Times” and “Lie Between the Lines” pack genuine emotional weight, as the latter continues ETID’s tradition of album openers in the apocalyptically hard drop-A tuning (see “Dark Distance” and “Fear and Trembling”). This groovy and complex mid-tempo monster is as viscerally gripping as any heavy song you’ll hear this year. As if in preparation for what’s to come, it’s so confident in its own muscle-warped skin you can’t help but be knocked sideways by its swaggering brilliance.
Lyrically, Puciato is in particularly confrontational form, as titles like “Superman Died Paralyzed” and “Everything Was Put Here for Me” can attest. A couple songs look at the state of the world (“Drowning in a Burning World” requires little explanation), but the majority are interested in the ticking, complex cores of human beings. Puciato rarely uses first-person pronoun found in his bandmates’ old moniker, a notable exception being the most emotive and open-hearted cut “At All Time.” He’s more interested in directing his lyrics toward an unseen enemy, eviscerating a person of questionable character on “A White Horse Covered in Blood” and using the term to chew over the nature of standing in one’s own way on “Lie Between the Lines.” It may simply be apophenia, but it’s hard not to read some of these accusatory lyrics as being directed toward a certain former ETID member.
A dream fusion of heavy minds, Highly Irresponsible was never going to be anything but a success. That doesn’t mean that its creators didn’t have to work hard at it—particularly the former ETID members, who watched their world fall apart prior to their regrouping. But perhaps most impressively, Better Lovers’ debut never feels like it’s even trying, such is the almost ostentatious levels of skill, verve, and élan on display. It’s a ferocious, blood-pumping effort that reminds you that rock music still has new depths of exhilaration and creativity left to plumb.
