Touché Amoré – Spiral In A Straight Line (Review)

At one point in time I thought I saw “the future” of my Hardcore-listening-history. In 2012 Converge were playing the Essigfabrik in Cologne with A Storm of Light, The Secret and Touché Amoré opening. Touché Amoré were still riding the BIG word of mouth from their second LP Parting the Sea between Brightness and me and a good portion of the crowd was very eager to see them. I only knew some songs off their debut and said LP but also was eager to see if there was something behind the “hype”.

Man, it was.

Fast forward 12 years. Spiral In A Straight Line is already the sixth album and the second time they are working with producer legend Ross Robinson, who also produced the predecessor Lament. In retrospect, Lament left me a bit cold. Of course there were great songs on that album (“Limelight“, “Savoring” or “I’ll be your Host“) but somehow I didn’t listen much to this album.

On July 24th “Nobody’s” hit the streaming-services and I was hooked. I can’t tell what struck me about this song, but I guess it was just a “welcome home”-feeling, that Lament was missing in my case (just another opinion). The opening triplet consisting of “Nobody’s“, “Disasters” and “Hal Ashby” sounds like a summary of the first three albums: uptempo, melody and cultural references.

“Finalist” is also one of those songs that immediately reminded me of the Is survived by–Touché Amoré“ or the great Altitude” which serves as a kind of title track and it is one of the brightest moments on this album.

Spiral In A Straight Line finishes strong with “Goodbye For Now” which has the great Julien Baker in a guest spot. It starts like a Frail Body song, evolves and finally ends as chilling a “Skyscrapers” off Stage four. There is hardly any other band in the genre right now that is capable of evoking that much kinetic energy and creating that much emotional depth within 32 minutes.

So does this album manifest Touché Amoré’s reputation as my personal future Hardcore-listening-history? Of course it does and the future still shines as bright as it did when I first heard them.