Do you like Justice? Did you spin the hell out of Cross when en route to a club, or at a house party, or even in your room with no one else around, shaking your ass in your underwear? Are you looking forward to this new album? Great! Just… don’t expect Cross II.
This new album still sounds like Justice, but most of their dirty compressed bass has been traded in for stadium guitar. Flashes of the old Cross-era grime still exist in places, but there is much more emphasis on the vocal hook, and there’s no spontaneous assault of white noise, either. The whole nightclub atmosphere of the old LP has been replaced by something else that still manages to sound like the group, but for people like myself anticipating this record for about three years now, it took some getting used to.
That isn’t to say the new record is completely devoid of merit. I found myself liking a lot of it. Each track, if not good, has at least one interesting component to it. However, I found the atmosphere of Cross to run throughout each track, unifying them into a very tight album. That doesn’t happen on Audio, Video, Disco, where each track has a different sound and attitude, and is distinct from the others (except for Canon and Canon Primo). And while some tracks like Newlands, Canon, Helix, and the opener Horsepower have that old swagger, we’ve got others that have interesting parts but layer up into something less than satisfactory, like Ohio and On’n'On.
Overall, we have a solid album here. It’s just going to get badmouthed because people wanted another DVNO, another DANCE, another Stress, etc. Even if you completely change your expectations for the record before listening to it, looking at the large cross on the cover brings you mentally back to their debut. For people dead-set on wanting to play new Justice at a house party or a nightclub, I’d wait until the remixes start coming out
In conclusion I’d give this album 3 Halls out of 5 Oates. Solid but nothing spectacular.
