ninehertz

Class Traitor hit the ground running on their debut Calving and have never let up, every release hitting the mark, with The Images Aren’t Mine unsurprisingly being no different. The Melbourne quartet’s unique brand of noise-rock and sludge is as vibrant and experimental as ever.

There’s so much packed in, so many angles of note to be dissected and considered it’d take a review thrice as long to go into it all. Before we even try, it’s worth laying out the essentials – that while their component parts are all familiar, Class Traitor somehow find a way to manipulate and distort these sounds into something new, and that it is both a fascinating and thrilling listen.

The vocals are distinctive throughout – forceful and emotional at times, similarities in hardcore to Closet Witch, Cloud Rat and the like, a rabid yapping elsewhere, earnest, bold and sung at many times too. The music moves between blackened hardcore and noise-rock, bringing in moments of doom and sludge commonly. At the record’s high points it is electric, on the massive sounding In Starlight for example, where a bristling, electrified atmosphere is set alight by ferocious vocals, with the exits guarded to deny escape by the weighty, repeating instrumentation.

Their restlessness is apparent through less likely additions – a cleaner sound in stretches that you’d not imagine, post-punk nods, vocal laments dominating whole tracks. There’s a lot going on, but it is knit cohesively, varied and vibrant and constantly engaging. Three releases in, Class Traitor are still a band to follow, their steps may be unpredictable but should be tracked with keen intent.