Review: Without Waves – Comedian

Style: Experimental Metal, Post-Hardcore, Technical Metal (Mixed vocals)
Review by: Christopher
Country: US-IL
Release date: 18 March, 2022

When you think about it, flamingos are really bizarre birds: a species famed for standing on one leg, building little mud-pile nests in shallow water, and using their oddly bent beaks to sift upside-down for small crustaceans in the water, the pigments within giving them their striking pink plumage. They’re like an experiment-gone-wrong that sort of worked out anyway. And on that note, it’s time to review Without Waves’ new album Comedian!

Illinois experimenters Without Waves have carved out a curious niche for themselves. They sound like a band whose first forays into heavy music were more on the post-hardcore, metalcore and alt-metal side of things—think The Safety Fire, 36 Crazyfists, and Deftones—before finding bands like Car Bomb and The Dillinger Escape Plan who blew their minds. As a result, Comedian has a clear post-hardcore sensibility, but the actual composition is in the extreme/experimental camp: tempestuous dissonance, time signatures to confuse maths PhDs, eight-handed drumming, and whiplash inducing changes in tempo and style.

This makes for an appealing range; at their most frenetic you get songs like “Good Grief” with its manic vocal performance and schizophrenic riff changes, or the dissonant harmonic-laden noise of “Animal Kingdom”; while at the more accessible end you find the Deftones inspired languor of “Sleep Deep” which feels like you’re helplessly nodding off into a waiting nightmare, or the post-hardcore anthem “Sleight in Shadows” which is sure to satisfy fans of The Safety Fire. At the same time, “.algorithm” and others seem to incorporate a nu-metal influence that sits a little uncomfortably but is nevertheless yet another feather in the band’s plumage-laden cap. Suffice to say, Without Waves are a welcome change from experimental and extreme metal outfits that lean too heavily on the Meshuggah or The Dillinger Escape Plan influence.

However, there is a “but”, and it’s a pretty important one. The multiplicity of styles simply doesn’t blend, or, it does but only occasionally. The overall album feels like it was written by three different personalities: the post-hardcore one, the extreme metal one, and the experimental one that blends the two. Every member is clearly superbly talented and there are some compositional through lines, but even individual songs can feel as though they lack cohesion. Perhaps that’s a silly criticism to level at an experimental band, but experiments don’t always go according to plan and this one hasn’t had as thorough a stirring as it needs.

It’s the third personality, the one that successfully blends the two styles, that excels. As a result, Comedian has a clear trajectory: beginning on the extreme end of their style, blending the two styles in the middle, and giving way to creative post-hardcore in the final third. That middle third, from “Set & Setting” through to “Sleight in Shadows” comprises much of the best work on this album. Many prog groups could benefit from expanding their focus; these guys might do best to narrow theirs. There’s a lot of potential here, a truly exciting amount, but the focus is somewhat scattershot; by the end you’re listening to a rather different album from the one you started with. That could well be by design, but I’m not convinced it is.                              

Stylish, talented, unique, and undeniably great fun to listen to, Without Waves are superlative musicians and Comedian is an engaging and accomplished listen, replete with all the accoutrements of extreme metal and post-hardcore. But, like the majestic flamingos that adorn the album’s cover, this collection of disparate features adds up to a distractingly inconsistent beast whose various facets ultimately end up somewhat at odds with one another. A flamingo is perfectly adapted to its strange lifestyle and so are Without Waves, but they’re both just a bit too weird and jumbled to be accepted as is. Unfortunately, flamingos are stuck like that until a few million years of selection pressures transform them. Without Waves, on the other hand, could adapt and go far. 

Recommended tracks: Good Grief, Sleight in Shadows, Set & Setting
Recommended for fans of: Car Bomb, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Safety Fire
You may also like: The Offering, Pathogenic, Pangaea, NORD, Torrential Downpour
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Prosthetic Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Without Waves is:
– Anthony Cwan (vocals, guitar)
– Zac Lombardi (guitar)
– John Picillo (bass and vocals)
– Garry Naples (drums)