Manchester Orchestra: Mean Everything To Nothing

Of all the album releases on the cards for 2009, this was the one which loomed with the greatest sense of apprehension.

After their début album and the E.Ps that followed it was always a possibility that they could have chosen a gentler route. Less aggression means more money from the mainstream - a fact which has tempted, tainted and destroyed many bands in the past. As such, why wouldn't it tempt a band already basking in critical acclaim just one album into their career?

Thankfully we don't need to consider those options for long as the band have done nothing of the sort. What they have done though, is create something of a monster.

Front-man and lead-vocalist Andy Hull has officially gone insane and it's clear for all to hear. His voice breaks and creaks like an old, wooden door hitched on hinges from the medieval age; his screams have doubled in passion and emotion; his lyrics have grown darker and more unsteady, letting twisted verses run amok and shouts last a life time. He spits his words instead of singing them and adds a stinging venom to each song that turns every sentence into nastier, more drastic affair than anything witnessed on their début. 

Shake It Out is a fantastic piece of art which shows Manchester Orchestra in an entirely new light. They're still the same band, they've just seen and experience more of the world: experience which seems to have weighed in on their souls. The track kicks, screams and tumbles along with a rough but melodic rhythm and Hull shows his darkly comical persona with aplomb. "I am the living ghost of what you need" he shouts with a new-found confidence, "I am everything eternally". It's both glaringly original and also a perfect example of what these guys want to be as a band.

Mean Everything To Nothing is almost the exact opposite of what we were expecting, especially after a record like I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child. Where that record was fragile, this one is confident, boasting larger choruses and jilted, shouted chants. Where I'm Like A Virgin held a naked innocence as its exterior, this record seems to have learnt a few things and grown darker and more disparate with time. 

Pride starts like something from Tool and moulds into a stomping, droning, hazy, stoner-metal anthem which lifts the band far and away from any previous constraints we once thought they had. Hull shreds his throat with coarse squeals and harsh, drunken squeaks and when the track finally breaks around the half-way mark, the instruments follow suit. Sand paper screams and raucous rock riffage have never gone better together.

From the introductory tracks catchy hooks to the centre's short burst of brilliance that is 100 Dollars ("i am fine, i am fine, i am fine, i am fine, i just need 100 dollars!") to the surprisingly toned down final track The River, this album is more than anything we could've asked or hoped for. Even the subtleties serve to increase the overall enjoyment: just listen to the soaring backing screams in the fantastic I've Got Friends or Tony The Tiger's soft keys which play gently in the background. Listen out for the violin in I Can Feel A Hot One which settles the whole track and try and listen to the first line of In My Teeth and let us know if you can also hear "I felt a black man in my teeth"?

What Manchester Orchestra have done here is not only create one of the best albums of the year so far (if not the past few years) but they've also managed to do what ninety percent of others bands haven't and that's blow away any hype, hopes or doubts that anyone may have had about them in the three years running up to this record.

Deep, dark, unsettling, emotional, maniacal, alcohol-tinged and completely genius in every sense of the word, Mean Everything To Nothing is a landmark in real music today.