MUSIC REVIEWS
Misery Index | Foals | Stella Donnelly | Ibibio Sound Machine | Flight of the Conchords | Orville Peck | Nilüfer Yanya
Misery Index
Rituals of Power
Misery Index have hit a point in their career where they are comfortable playing all kinds of death metal: grind, melo-death or straightforward. That left them with the challenge to create something that isn’t simply repeating themselves, but luckily, the politically driven deathgrind act came up with something spectacular on their latest album, Rituals of Power. The band delve into the idea of living in the “post-truth” era and tear into topics such as media bias, refugee journeys and political echo chambers, among other things, across the record. Clocking in at a slender half-hour of vicious grind, the band waste no time in denouncing the current political climate through short bursts of punk, searing deaththrash and massive death metal grooves. While the majority of death metal acts have a difficult time making their lyrics understandable, Misery Index vocalist Jason Netherton manages to enunciate clearly and allow the meaning behind the songs to shine through. Where Misery Index’s last record, The Killing Gods, saw them embracing more melodic elements and completing their progression to master their sound, Rituals of Power is a more succinct output that almost feels too short. The album begs to be played on repeat, with enough variation in sounds and depth in lyrics to keep you coming back. (Season of Mist)
How have you been affected by the shifting media landscape?
Netherton: Our lives are funnelled through social media intermediaries and our information is much more on display, but the bigger questions are about what Facebook and other companies are doing to discourse and public debate. I do think they change the way people think about themselves in relation to society, with the constant attention to themselves, monitoring and self-evaluating, which can be unhealthy.
How did you become interested in media studies?
I gravitated towards media studies as a way to understand how we interpret reality through our media systems and how culture is produced. They had a really good program at Western University, so I started there about six or seven years ago, and I’m just in the final stages now of wrapping that up.