If Failure‘s 2015 album, The Heart Is a Monster, picked up where 1996’s Fantastic Planet left off, then their 2018 album, In the Future Your Body Will Be the Furthest Thing from Your Mind, doesn’t pick up where THIAM left off. It lifts off the ground and takes the band even further into the cosmos.
“Dark Speed” gets things off to a groovy start with Greg Edwards‘ funky bass line that will have you tapping your fingers on the steering wheel or your hot rod or your space cruiser. The bass gets heavier on “Paralytic Flow,” as do Ken Andrews‘ vocals about lust, desire, and passion. “Pennies” is one of those mellow tracks that Failure does so well: Simple, soft vocals, almost orchestral arrangements, and floating-in-space sound throughout the whole thing.
The album includes three “Segues” (numbers 10, 11, and 12), which begun with Fantastic Planet and have continued onto multiple albums since then. These tracks are all instrumentals either linking one song to the next or standing on their own as meditations. “Segue 10” is one of the meditative tracks, which clears your head before the somewhat menacing “No One Left.” Kellii Scott pounds out a lot of excess energy he had in the studio that day on it.
The drums and bass on “Solar Eyes” come to kick ass and take names. Andrews encourages us all to rest on “What Makes It Easy,” which is almost a soft love song. “Segue 11” sounds like it combines whale song with a thunderstorm. The slow build of “Found a Way” is like the sensation of watching an approaching comet. It’s a song about a break-up (“I finally found a way to release you and I don’t need anything you left me.””) wrapped in a power-rock track.
Scott’s drumming on “Distorted Fields” is wild and full of what almost sound like random drum fills, but then you realize he’s playing in advanced time signatures that will make your head spin. The groove of “Heavy and Blind” is wicked. “Another Post Human Dream” is a ballad for a prom at Phillip K. Dick High School. “Apocalypse Blooms” is the song you play in the car as you’re leaving that prom and heading for the make-out spot overlooking a neon-lit city with the knowledge it might be the last night of planet Earth.
“Come meet me in the silence,” Andrews sings on “Force Fed Rainbow” – a song great for leaving the comfort of a space station for the unknown, endless silence of space. “The Pineal Electorate” (with Edwards on lead vocals) reveals the band’s love of The Beatles‘ psychedelic era.
It’s another solid, cosmic entry in Failure‘s discography, and an album that will thinking of big-picture science and even bigger picture thoughts on humanity, technology, and the relationships between both.
Keep your mind open.
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