Horse Lords make Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive feel almost welcoming, which is suspicious

Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive gets 16 June review attention, and the most surprising headline is that the band may have made their most welcoming record without surrendering the mathy intensity that makes them Horse Lords in the first place. The Baltimore group’s music has always been about collective precision: conflicting meters, repeating cells, hypnotic guitar patterns and a kind of disciplined momentum that feels like watching a machine learn to breathe. This time, the core sound is reportedly opened up by woodwinds, horns and the band’s first use of vocals. That matters because it adds air and light to a project often associated with tight rhythmic architecture. Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive still sounds like a workout for the nervous system, but now there may be a field, a sky and a strange hymn floating above the gears.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/horse-lords-demand-to-be-taken-to-heaven-alive/