FRESH SNOW

Won “When fire has turned us into ashes / And time has erased all memories / When the words we’ve spoken here have vanished / You will still be my family.” Between icy, industrial hisses and hammers on “Proper Burial,” Carmen Elle (DIANA, Army Girls) coos these lines over a dreary church organ and a meandering bass line. She’s voicing the first words heard from Toronto’s Fresh Snow, and it’s intriguing that the temporal nature of communication and the stability of community are the subject. Usually an instrumental organism, before this, Fresh Snow didn’t have a lot of words in their modest catalogue of dynamic experimental rock. Aside from some buried vocals, their 2013 debut, I, was untouched by lyrics. Here, Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham also lends his righteous bark to the rumbling blast-off and atmospheric drifts of album closer “Don’t Fuck a Gift Horse in the Mouth.” “Proper Burial” is ironically colder than anything Fresh Snow have committed to record yet, the pulsing and shimmering drones on “Delft” are curiously rested and “Don’t Fuck a Gift Horse in the Mouth” sounds like the band I showed us, but with punk vocals. The big takeaway is that Fresh Snow aren’t the band we think they are. I wasn’t created in a vacuum, and its followup proves its creators won’t be boxed comfortably into a corner. Second time out, Fresh Snow call upon allies to assist in a metamorphosis. It’s a second chapter in a quest for sonic adventure that is just as important as its first, defeating expectations, taking risks and reshaping its identity, all without compromise. Won, indeed. (Hand Drawn Dracula, handdrawndracula.com) TOM BEEDHAM