Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

The cumulative effect can be like listening to a church choir doing canons while simultaneously crushing OCs on your bicuspids, one at a bloody time.

A couple of tracks feature liberally processed vocals, but the singing acts less as a melodic agent than as one more source of instrumental texture.

While their spacious, mostly instrumental music makes good use of dynamics (and reaches ear-bleeding volumes during live shows), they mark their label switch from Matador to Sub Pop with a lightness (as in absence of darkness, not bereft of weight) that's refreshing.

Its (mostly) gimmick-free, clear-eyed dreamer propulsion will buoy you. But if, like me, you're looking for something a little deeper in an instrumental rock record and you don't unrestrainedly sanctify this band, you may want to hold out till the next Do Make Say Think album.

Hardcore contains some of their most affecting tunes since the early singles, instrumental parts coiling around each other in graceful, liquid polyphony. [Mar 2011, p.97]

This is an album that's far from complacent and what's most in evidence throughout is they're seeking to challenge themselves as much as their audience.

If Mogwai are looking for new routes to explore then Hardcore is a strong first venture.

They aren't working out new muscles so much as they're toning and flexing the ones they have. That doesn't make these songs bad, or even boilerplate. Mogwai is good enough at what they do to keep it fresh enough, but when they're not exploring as much on record, we get less to listen for in the bargain.

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will--doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.

For now, Mogwai is happy and ready to stay more firmly planted in the present and the physical. It's a beautiful album, sure, but most important, it's a fun one too.

The peaks and valleys have eroded into slightly more forgiving terrain on Hardcore, but they're still worth a trip.

So it continues with Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, an album with no missteps...because every trick that Mogwai has used in the past is present in almost comically balanced fashion.

While the album is far from rote, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will certainly feels familiar; it may not be as immediately impressive as some Mogwai albums, but its back-to-basics approach makes it another fine addition to their body of work.

The thicker the walls of sound this time around, the better, too--the forward-marching layers of distortion throughout "Rano Piano" and at the end of the hyper-cinematic "You're Lionel Richie" are the most purposeful and satisfying aspects of the album.

For Mogwai, it works; the sound's grandiloquent and goddamnit, loud.

By giving a wide berth to the safety of the post-rock label they've long despised, Mogwai have recorded some of their finest songs since "Mr Beast."

Whether this is a better record than previous Mogwai releases is hard to say categorically, but it is certainly bolder and braver than what came before it. Yet equally, it is the same trademark moves and subtleties that will make and just as rewarding of repeated listens as its predecessors. Mogwai have released another jumper, but not quite like we know it.

Hardcore... may be their most consistent album for a while but any of its tracks would have fitted perfectly on its predecessors Mr Beast or The Hawk is Howling.

It's a striking snapshot of a band on top of their ever-evolving game, with a fair amount of surprises thrown in for good measure.

Every band should mature like the Mogwai lads: still inventive, still challenging themselves and still insanely loud.

Though generally a triumph, the album has a couple cuts that feel unsubstantiated.

So while Hardcore... is a shift of speed, downwards, it's only a gear change rather than a signal that the whole journey's coming to an end.

Hardcore is mostly content to refine the band's epic, frequently breathtaking constructions.

Hardcore Will Never Die has a good amount of brawn to it but ultimately falls into the category of breathtaking music that isn't made too often.

You and I may die, but we can all rest easy in the knowledge that not only shall hardcore never die, but neither shall Mogwai. Long live the kings of post-rock noise.

It's not that it's post-rock-by-numbers, although at times it really is, but more so that it doesn't even sound like there are painters behind the palette.

Washed-out electronic textures, vocodered singing, and gentle piano envelop much of the album in a pastoral haze, and while Mogwai's signature guitar dynamics are both present and predictably melodramatic, they eschew the balls-out heavy-metal tantrums that Burning so capably highlighted.

It's still apparent that Mogwai have, once again, produced a record of astonishing subtlety.

The Scots post-rockers who will outlast them all. [March 2011, p. 100]

Yeah, it's been done before, but Mogwai have an astounding command of the songwriting chops necessarily to do it right, which they've remarkably done yet again without sounding in the least but stale. [Feb 2011, p.66]

Hardcore sounds defiantly re-energised, like a band starting over. [Mar 2011, p.112]

As Hardcore closes, it beats its chest too, the subtleties of the album's earlier songs unfurled into those wonderful dramas of old. [12 Feb 2011, p.52]