At first impression of Uniform’s latest LP Shame (Sacred Bones) the impression I’m left with is that this is a strange album, if not group. And don’t confuse strange for off-putting, quite the contrary actually. Song after song I’m legitimately curious as to how the next slab of noise and guitars is going to render out. Shame doesn’t come across as musicians playing in unison as much as an A.I. becoming aware of what music is and taking a stab at it.

‘Delco’ keeps a minimalistic vibe that recalls Helmet or Unsane’s more tame moments that erroneously informs the listener that the rest of Shame will follow suit. ‘The Shadow of God’s Hand’ keeps this illusion up until an explosion of Hardcore Punk fury and speedy beats lets us know that this machine has been busy boning up on all sorts of musical extremes. Do you like Black Metal? Uniform has a deconstructed take on the genre complete with a healthy serving of blast beats on ‘Life in Remission.’

But the experimentation isn’t done as the title-track reins things back in and settles on more of a Jesu Post-Metal mood that dare I say registers as quite catchy. And in case you needed some more of that hardcore carpet bombing, ‘Dispatches from the Gutter’ lives up to its moniker and delivers the goods in less than two minutes. This wouldn’t be much of an extreme metal release if we didn’t save some of the best for last and ‘I am the Cancer’ may be the most experimental out of the bunch. At the outset, we get a good layer of Deafheaven-like black metal gaze that morphs into a beast of a riff that wouldn’t be out of place on Mastodon’s Leviathan. That gets the blood running for a minute or two before Uniform yanks the handbrake and lands directly in Doom territory for the remainder of the song.

This machine may seem whiplash-inducing, but it knows its way around some punk and metal avenues.

Purchase the album here: https://geni.us/Uniform_Shame

8/10

HANS LOPEZ