“I Let It In and It Took Everything” – Loathe

Album Recommendation of the Month / February 2023

On I Let It In and It Took Everything we see an album that’s biggest struggle is its identity crisis, an overall composition torn between the shoegaze inspired riffs of the Deftones and skull-pulverizing metalcore breakdowns of acts like Car Bomb. It’s an interesting concept when put to paper, but too often this album feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, which is frustrating because all of it is good. Songs like “Two-Way Mirror” and “Is It Really You?” sound like Saturday Night Wrist b-sides while others like “New Faces in the Dark” are pummeling enough to give you blunt force trauma. And while I’m no stranger to heavy music, often times where I find this album comes up lacking is in its heavier moments. In many ways it feels like the band was trying to finish a puzzle, but when they realized they didn’t have all the pieces rather than leave it incomplete they tried to fill in the gaps with pieces from a different one. Rather than commit to one idea the band seems torn in two directions, unable to commit to being a brutally heavy band with some moments of atmosphere or a Deftones-core band that utilizes metalcore riffs. 

This critique isn’t meant to condemn the album completely, because for what it might lack in cohesion and originality it makes up for with energy, but instead it is meant to express my disappointment. Because while I think this album is good, I also think this band has a lot more potential, and the ability to create something in the future that not only sounds more cohesive but sounds more… them. The ideas are there. The songwriting is there (well… except for the fact that they have a song called “theme” and it isn’t utilized, as far as I can tell, anywhere else on the album). All they need to do is have the courage to open up, and let it really take everything.