Album review: Within Destruction – ANIMETAL

What doesn’t kill you simply makes you stranger. Veterans of the mid-2010s deathcore boom, Within Destruction broke out with a formulaic, albeit effective, stylistic blend of gutturals and beatdowns, album artwork featuring nightmarish, city-levelling kaiju, and lyrics grappling the demons dwelling deeper within.

Increasing in confidence and flamboyance over the past half-decade, however, the Slovenian trio have grown bolder and more colourful, adding broad strokes of electro and nu-metal to the mix and doubling down on their fascination with all things Japanese. Cringe as it might come across on first glance, fifth album ANIMETAL feels like natural next step, channelling the vividness and theatricality of anime into a genre-hopping set of songs that feel both compellingly coherent and thrillingly bonkers.

ANIMETAL itself gets things going. An adrenaline-burst banger with hooks (‘ANIMETAL, ANIMETAL, ANIMETAL GO GO / ANIMETAL, ANIMETAL, ANIMETAL OH NO’) and Kawaii-ish samples that call to mind the best of BABYMETAL, it is a highlight in its own right. It's also an opening of the floodgates for more unexpected twists and turns. DEMON CHILD mixes in heavy R&B rhythms, neon-streaked atmospherics and throat-ripping fury. KANASHIBARI – referring to a form of sleep paralysis, translating literally as ‘Bound In Metal’ – teases the brutality of old, but with far deeper, darker dynamism.

Figuring out whether, or to what degree, each track is taking the piss is half the fun. The earnest opening couplet from BITTER EMBRACE, for instance – ‘When I look into your eyes, I see you're crumbling / Spare me all the lies, your lips are trembling’ – seems to be delivered with a straight face. But surely they’re deliberately riffing on Aqua’s Barbie Girl on unhinged centrepoint CYBERGIRL (‘Cybergirl / Living in a digital world!’) The swerve into floaty, impassioned emo on INCOMPLETE is another energising turn in the tale, subverted immediately by the pulsating, sugar-rush rave rock of STAY 4EVER. Then it’s back to skull-crushing synth-metal on the home stretch of AUTOMATON, HIDE_SICK and TORMENT.

Schizoid as it often feels, it also turns out to be an invigorating musical odyssey. Were they to narrow focus and rack up a few more certifiable barn-burners, Within Destruction might legitimately be able to mix it with some of metalcore’s arena-dominating big boys. But as the densely-packed 150 seconds of dazzling closer A LOVE THAT SLOWLY DIED suggests, maybe it’s more fun to let them go their own way.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: AngelMaker, BABYMETAL, Electric Callboy

ANIMETAL is out now via Sumerian