‘Anatomy of Habit expect you to follow them into the tumult of life. The most challenging exigencies often feel insurmountable, and the Chicago quintet are not here to sugar-coat things,’ said Scream Blast Repeat of 2023’s Black Opening. The lineup from that record and its 2021 predecessor is now at its most fertile. Paired Sentinels is the third album in five years, and there are no signs of complacency or going through the motions of pain. Indeed, its voyeurism and meditations on obsession will ask some difficult questions of the listener.
Like Joy Division at their moodiest and most daring, opener ‘Always Arriving’ works from a circular tom drum beat and thudding bassline. Mark Solotroff digs into the deepest range of his observational voice here as Alex Latus contemplates when to enter with his guitar textures. Often, the latter are loud and wrapped in a tsunami of distortion, yet they also provide a modicum of hope with the e-bow. At its heaviest, this art is one roar away from Cult of Luna. In the delicate moments, you can hear a band that developed a sixth sense through intense ritual repetition. This is music for the claustrophobe who wants the world to acknowledge his plight and then leave him alone.
The fragile melody of strummed guitar in the intro to ‘Conditions for Freedom’ will remind you of the 1989 transition album from Swans when they abandoned industrial music for a darker shade of folk. Sam Wagster’s bass and Skyler Rowe’s drums operate together like the delicate parts of a timepiece. Again, the guitar provides the dense atmospherics. You can sense a resignation to impending violence at the six-minute mark in the cloak of clanging arpeggios. These appear to have no direction other than to exist like inconsequential human breaths until they turn into staccato stabs and receive a regular beat. Then, you can hear Anatomy of Habit at their most animated. It’s a fury that aches as much as it combats the environment around it. Slow palm-muted scrapes and dissonant string bends throb like open sores on a blistered arm.
You might want to take a five-minute break before side B starts – it’s a testament to the power of the music. ‘The Importance of Risk’ is a post-punk puzzle for metalheads to dissect. Only one doubt will creep into your mind as you admire the unease of the Chicago group’s art: is this simply Joy Division with electric guitar technologies that were unavailable to the Mancunian legends in 1979? Play this song and then follow it with the first two tracks from Unknown Pleasures. It’ll help you see past the Joy Division similarities, though nobody can deny they exist, even in the delivery and sturdy rhythm of Solotroff’s voice. The main difference is the imagination of the guitar timbres. These are bleak yet also capable of finding the light in the darkness.
The down-tempo drawl of the closing title-track is how it would sound if you could go to heaven on your own terms in the spirit of an unreformed rogue. Skyler Rowe’s drum formations are ponderous and just about powerful enough to maintain a heartbeat. Here, Sam Wagster keeps things alive with the deep bass notes until the guitar demands a change of tempo at 04:40 and takes over the sonics like a wounded captain who finds a new strength to lead his men into the jaws of death. It’s a charge into madness that demands a retreat from reckless courage, and it comes in the form of a slow meditation of bass, drums and guitar chords that act like creatures hiding from danger. And the night silences this danger at the ten-minute mark, demanding rest from beast and prey alike. There is no energy for one last courageous stand as a pedal loop evaporates into the air and the combatants perish.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 31/07/2026
Record Label: Self Released
Standout tracks: Conditions for Freedom; Paired Sentinels
Suggested Further Listening: Lotus Thrones – Lovers in Wartime (2021), Throat – We Must Leave You (2023), Naut – Hunt (2023)