Psykup - We Love You All Review
by Mark Hensch
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Love has been described in many ways. Perhaps one of the most recurring of these descriptions is that of craziness. Love drives people towards seemingly unreasonable goals, makes them act out of character, and forces all manner of other irrational behaviors.
I am not sure if the above is what France's Psykup are hoping for with We Love You All but it is a good a description of their chaotic music. Love's six songs are a hodge-podge of all that is heavy, a random splatter of extremity and insanity. Finding sense in it is almost impossible – once one gains a handle over one part of a song, Psykup drastically erases any such stability with fluid but unpredictable changes. In much the same way the Dillinger Escape Plan once walked up to genre conventions and handily obliterated them, Psykup synthesize a number of disparate parts into a fresh, cohesive whole.
Album opener "Color Me Blood Red" is a prime example of this, its doom metal length packed with a vast sea of unexpected changes. Elements like mathcore stutters, jazzy lounge, bratty nu-metal shrieks, and blistering death metal all abide, the various parts making one brutal and interesting whole. Beyond this, the vocals shift like a kaleidoscope through every conceivable kind of singing voice, turning "Color" even more slippery. Despite being about one color – red – this is indeed a song of many hues.
The rest of the album follows in the footsteps of such weird incoherence. "My Toy My Satan" jangles with angular rhythms before drifting by in queasy clouds of ambient dissonance. By song's end, things have collapsed even further, "My Toy" revealing a mix of gibbering noise influenced by movie clips both ironic and unnerving.
"Retroaction," meanwhile, jumps around from Sepultara-esque grooves to Fantomas avant-garde expressions both weird and frightening. As jarring as such a transition probably sounds, Psykup handles it with a deft ability which never seems forced for the point of mere innovation.
Though such analyses undoubtedly prove Psykup a spastic, disorderly bunch, much of their sound still retains a subtle catchiness. As Love slowly but surely blossoms, listeners will find that the album's songs are a sly mixture of mania and lucidity. Though each of the songs blitz through all manner of unusual thought processes, the end result is an album which never loses its sole message – brutal heaviness. With this in mind, Psykup have created a challenging, progressive album that not everyone will Love but most will like.
Psykup's We Love You All
Color Me Blood Red
Birdy
My Toy My Satan
The Choice of Modern Men
Retroaction
Here Come the Waves
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Psykup - We Love You All Rating:8.5
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