France’s Comity constructs lengthy songs from short, violent outbursts of tightly wound riffs. It’s spastic, ragingly violent hardcore with a heavy dose of noise rock and a touch of post rock shimmer. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done many times before, but the restraint they show in the second half of The Journey is Now Over is refreshing. It’s only when they dial back their penchant for convulsive riffs and structure that they really come in to their own.

The Journey… features four lengthy tracks that make up two distinct halves. Comity take the micro song approach from As Everything is a Tragedy and refine it for their first two songs. “Part I” and “Part II” are characterized by the aforementioned spastic, noisy discord. The songs are in flux constantly, pieced together with a lot of short, dissonant riffs that continually shift and change with little repetition, like a mix of Wetnurse and Calculating Infinity-era Dillinger Escape Plan. Riffs are chopped in half, spun forward and backward as the drums careen alongside with roiling fills and dramatic time and tempo changes.

Comity’s approach on the second half is a more considered. Acoustic guitar, washes of noise and a more riff oriented performance color the second two tracks. “Part III” is largely acoustic and is a very effective slow burn, with an excellently fuzzed out wall of guitar noise in the last half. “Part IV” is the high mark and clocks in at over 20 minutes. It starts slow, descends in to familiarly schizophrenic hardcore, drops tempo and builds to some stirring psychedelic post rock before culminating in another furious explosion of chaos.

The second half really makes the album and is a proper display of the bands songwriting acumen. There’s a sense of direction and progression that the first tracks lack and the songs are more memorable as a result. After a few listens the discordance of the first half begins to act as a primer for the latter half and the album starts to feel more coherent. The band has done well building on their past and they’ve really elevated their game with this one.

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