Hi everyone, Bigthony Bitetano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this HMLTD record, FANGS.

HMLTD, for as long as I have been aware of these guys, they have been one of the more interesting and unpredictable rock outfits to come out of the UK in quite a long time. So unpredictable, I don't even know whether or not I'm going to enjoy whatever they put out next.

Truth be told, I was pretty enamored with their breakout EP that they put out years ago, as well as the follow-up debut album in 2020, West of Eden, which was a very animated and bold combination of goth rock and pop and post-punk with a lot of cultural commentary to boot. And many of these same elements also turned up on their sophomore record, The Worm, in 2023.

However, I found a lot of the commentary and songwriting to be a little blander and more redundant given what had just transpired on their debut. And in addition to that, what also made my enjoyment between these two projects so night and day was the arrival of all of this very showy theatrical instrumentation that made it sound as if I was listening to less a band and more a theater production. Reaching levels of camp that personally, I found to be a little difficult to stand.

With that being said, though, there were at least a handful of tracks in the lead-up to FANGS that piqued my interest and made it seem as if HMLTD was going to be taking some real shots in the dark on this project. And on the 11 songs with this 44-minute album, they most definitely do that.

This is handily their most experimental and most unpredictable project yet, but I guess as a result of that, the question is: are all of these new sounds and ideas done well? Are they complementary as an overall vision for an album? Do they even make sense? And if songs, teasers, like "Blitzkrieg" were any indication, maybe making sense is just not what HMLTD is even remotely interested in on this project. As this track essentially sees them going for what is some European hard-style techno with driving, distorted, high-tempo kicks, and just, over-the-top, over-affected lead vocals that sound like something that maybe you would get off a Mindless Self Indulgence album with a random, interrupting, sad piano outro to boot. And when I listened to it as a single, I was kind of wondering if these random changes would be bolstered by the surrounding tracks in the track list. Maybe it would all kind of flow together as a vision or something.

But no, a great deal of FANGS does actually feel quite random and all over the place. Lo and behold, the opening track, "What The Hell," sounds like a combination of some blog, indie, sleaze-era electroclash contrasting with sections of industrial hip-hop, guitar-led industrial hip-hop, that feel straight out of the Death Grips, Jenny Death era. The weirdest combination of sounds that I'm not sure I'm all that into hearing within the context of this record. But at least HMLTD was paying close enough attention to them to embody them pretty accurately and give them a slight goth twist.

And the journey of this album does not smooth out from here, of course. "I Used To Ride In Limousines" is kind of slow, heavy, sludgy, blown-out rock and roll with a bit of a mid-2000s garage punk twist. Think something like a solo Jack White recording, but if vocally it were being led by a young Nick Cave. Which, again, another moment where I can hear the reference points, see that to a certain degree, that they are being copied or embodied accurately and well. But do I want to hear them combined specifically in this way? Not necessarily.

I'm getting similar vibes off the track "Umami" as well, though I'm not even sure if this one would appeal to everybody. Like I said in my original take of this track, and mind you, I like this song, but it literally does sound like if you had some goth-style dance music producers who suddenly got really into party rock and wanted to write their own goth tribute to LMFAO.

Following this, we get at least a handful of more measured songs that I think are a bit more approachable on some level. "One Thousand White Horses", for example, might be a little underwhelming in contrast to some of the louder tracks here, but it does have a very low-key, somber vocal performance. Very dark, bassy, metallic synth leads that have a very low-toned clang to them. There's just a very world-weary energy coming off this track that's pretty palatable.

Then "Close To You," in my opinion, is one of the biggest bops on the project. Some real, bona fide 80s goth rock with some horror imagery in the lyrics. It's an oddly sensual bit that I could actually see myself replaying beyond my review of this album.

However, with the "Chateau Vamp freestyle," I cannot. I just can't. I've spun the song numerous times, and as much as I do appreciate its audacity, because in so many ways, it feels like I'm listening to theatrical, pirate, sea shanty, cabaret rock. It's very ornate, it's very arranged, it's just very flamboyant and bold and animated. Gaudy as well, but there is, I think, a camp tolerance level that this song is just pushing far beyond for me.

"Grab the Crucifix," I feel like, suffers from similar vibes as well, in terms of the band pushing their own theatrics to the point where it feels just kind of like an elaborate bit, or rather, maybe the proper phrase is a more unserious bit. And unfortunately, these issues of either inconsistency or just a sour taste left in my mouth persist into the end of the album.

The closer features these overly affected vocals that I just find very grating. "Blitzkrieg," which I was mentioning earlier, I do appreciate from the standpoint of, wow, this is like a vastly different song stylistically from everything else here, thanks to the rave being such a point of inspiration. But as a structure, as a vision, it just feels so incomplete and cut off toward the end.

"Shudder" is a very solid piece of synth pop with a dark streak to it, for sure. But it's not good enough of a track to kind of buoy the overall quality of the album that much.

I mean, while I am still very much on the fence, and I think super mixed on this record overall, I will say, I do think HMLTD did miraculously come through with more highlights on this project than they did on The Worm, to my ears. Mostly due to some of these weird experiments they did, and at least a few of them panned out. And even though I wasn't crazy about it, at the very least, you could not, there's no possible way that anybody could peg this album as being boring. This album is a lot of things. You could even argue too many things. But it's definitely not boring. There is nothing boring about this album at all.

So even if I am having a bit of a tough time with this one, I think HMLTD can at least take pride in that. So yeah, I'm essentially feeling a strong five on this one.

Anthony Fantano. HMLTD. Forever.