Tankerlow has only been around for about four years now, but their sound has shifted significantly between their debut and sophomore effort. 2024’s 5301 opted for sprawling post rock and post hardcore’s bite, capturing the soft to loud approach that bands like Slint pioneered back in the 90’s while retaining a vibe of its own. Two years later, the group has returned with SLAGROOM and it’s immediately apparent how different this one is from its predecessor. The soft to loud transitions remain in place, but how tankerlow gets there is now rooted in industrial rock, noise rock, post punk, and everything in between. It’s a noticeably darker and angrier sounding release that often shifts without warning, and while not every element fully clicked with me the constant sense of tension and crashing peaks still make this album a worthwhile listen.
It’s clear from the very beginning just how different tankerlow’s two albums are. Where 5301 opened with a driving beat and more of a somber alternative rock vibe that was punctuated with bursts of post hardcore, when you press play on SLAGROOM you’re met with distorted, robotic sounding voices saying the album/song title and bursts of electronic noise. “Din” then takes over with a steady electronic pulse that maintains a sense of tension, as you know the sounds about to explode into something louder and chaotic at some point but you’re not sure when. It turns out that explosion is reserved for the end, and it’s well timed with Guy Azulay saying somebody sound the alarm before the instrumentals whip into a frenzy of loud electronics and booming drums. There’s a noticeable shift on this climax into noisier industrial, industrial rock, and even noise rock, but these elements become more noticeable as you get further in. “Plasticine” and “Glory Hole” both pivot over to the jagged, angular riffing of noise rock alongside bass lines that have a bit more post punk feel to them, but the way they twist and turn feels a little less predictable and there are some natural pauses that keep the tension. “Leta Yancey” goes for a shorter burst of sparser instrumentation that transitions to pummeling electronics, while “Ergo/Ogre” suddenly flips over to dance punk around the three-and-a-half-minute mark, giving me this LCD Soundsystem meets noise rock vibe. “Formula Baby” also features hammered dulcimer and has a Botanist fused with The Fragile era Nine Inch Nails approach that’s surprisingly infectious. I am also reminded of different eras of Swans throughout SLAGROOM, especially with the tense, sparser sections that explode into much darker and violent climaxes. Admittedly some of the transitions are a little too jagged for their own good, as some songs just seem to end abruptly or without fully finishing their ideas, and closer “Sanguine” heads back towards some of the post rock and sprawl of the first album but comes across as a bit too subdued to end things off.
The vocals are another area where tankerlow finds the right balance between subdued and explosive, as after the distorted and slightly unsettling robotic nature of the title track, “Din” spends much of its run focused on moodier spoken word with bursts of yelling at the end. This continues on “Plasticine”, but the spoken word builds methodically for the first two minutes or so until Azulay reaches a full-on scream that fuses with the denser wall of sound. Here the jaggedness and chaotic feeling of the screaming channels a considerable amount of noise rock influence and compared to the harsher sections on 5301 the cadence and pitch sounds different. Every time you think you’ve heard everything tankerlow has to offer on the vocal front they shake things up more, as “Glory Hole” shifts to more expressive singing that reminds me of post punk like The Murder Capital, while “Sanguine” has a breezier and somber alternative rock vibe. There is a lot to unpack from all the different aspects of the performance, and that’s not even mentioning some of the effects on certain songs that turn the vocals into additional instruments.
Where their debut sprawled outwards and had a lot of sparser, restrained sections in between crashing peaks, tankerlow’s sophomore effort is a very different beast. It still has sparser sections, but the tension rarely lets up and even when things are a bit more subtle you know an explosion of industrial noise and gloom or jagged noise rock is somewhere around the corner. Sometimes things transition and end just a bit too abruptly, as if the ideas haven’t completely reached their full conclusion and the closing track ended things a bit more subdued than I would’ve liked, but there are so many interesting elements to this album that I’ve found myself drawn back to it. I can’t think of too many other releases that have me thinking of Swans and Nine Inch Nails for a good portion and then suddenly drops an LCD Soundsystem sounding danceable section, and I’m interested in how the band can continue to harness this type of controlled chaos. SLAGROOM is available from Danger Collective Records.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
