TODAY IS THE DAY

It has never been entirely clear what kind of band TODAY IS THE DAY is. Leader and founder Steve Austin has been an instinctive rebel throughout his career, weaving in and out of subgenres with the devil-may-care spirit of someone that truly gives no fucks about pleasing any particular audience. Each successive album has thrown up some form of subversive, directional change, and even at their most aggressive and direct, Austin's crew have always been slightly weirder and less cooperative than any of the cookie-cutter bands that, however superficially, have been operating on similar ground. There is a world of difference between the extreme hardcore and abominable sludge that typified early classics like "Temple Of The Morning Star" (1997),and the berserk experimentation and electronic mischief that produced the bilious splurge of "Sadness Will Prevail" five years later. Latterly, albums like 2004's "Kiss The Pig" (which was a terrifying fist to the face) and 2011's "Pain Is A Warning" (which was disarmingly accessible) have kept everyone guessing. 2020's "No Good To Anyone" bypassed everything that fans have come to expect, speeding down an entirely new and imaginative road in order to achieve its unsettling goals. Whatever it is that TODAY IS THE DAY are doing, and this remains true on "Never Give In", they may not be doing it next time around. So get in quick, buckle up and prepare yourselves for further confusion.

Therein lies the joy, of course. The band's 12th studio album is another glimpse into Austin's hazy artistic urges and fractious temperament, and as such, it muddies the waters more than ever before. Now fully independent, TODAY IS THE DAY are a liberated force, drunk on possibilities and beholden only to their leader's reliably warped and wayward approach to getting this stuff down on tape.

The opening "Divide and Conquer" sums up the approach: ostensibly a straightforward, gothic/noise rock chugger, it has a strange, psychedelic post-punk façade, as if the song itself is fighting its way through some impenetrable wall of eccentricity. Feedback and harmonics double as rhythmic hooks. Guitars crunch and clatter in the middle distance. Austin's voice is a SUICIDE-like spectral presence, lost in a woozy void of his own making. It would be catchy if it wasn't so weird. And yet it is utterly compelling, an invitation to shrug off the cliches of the alternative underground and to surrender to a wholly different set of values. "I Got Nothin'" is artfully tantalizing. It's fetid electronics, barbarous synths, and guitars that bleed like fleshly arthouse installations puncture the song's minimalist throb like hostile invaders from the fiery depths. Midway through, a sinister, horror flick keyboard crashes the party, as Austin's gentle diatribe politely declines to reach an emotional crescendo. Nobody else is making music quite like this.

The rest offers a defiantly oddball mixture of perverse heaviness and corrupted alt-rock tropes, while never settling on any particular mood or motion. "International Psychological Warfare" is as close as TODAY IS THE DAY get to mimicking the past: gnarly and insistent, it uses three chords to say the unsayable, while simultaneously sounding like an off-kilter out-take from some lost, left-field punk classic. Meanwhile, the title track creeps and crawls with malicious intent, dripping bile over a simple, chilling guitar figure, building up to an acid rock freakout with a bad attitude, and a satisfyingly dour, downbeat coda. The album takes a thrilling turn with "Secret Police", a jittery, mid-tempo collision between hateful riffs, vehement screams, and a gloriously incongruous brass section that goes wild over blank-eyed, super-distorted riffs and a tornado of psychedelic chaos. "Psychic Wound" is bitter, loose and terminally lopsided, as noise rock extremity battles with the squashed sonics of Austin's sound world. "The Choice Is Yours" sounds less like a generous delegation than a guarantee of life's crumbling sureties: six minutes of grim riffs and thumping persistence, it tramples on hope with a benevolent scowl. In contrast, "Pain and Frustration" is all trippy, two-finger piano, cosmic interference and pervasive, synthesizer textures, with Austin reciting despairing poetry in the stark, vulnerable foreground. Even more startling, "The Cleansing" is dense, death-black Americana, with tense but tender vocals and a growing sense of unease.

TODAY IS THE DAY are still impossible to pin down, but the red line of existential tumult that has informed so much of their catalogue (all of which is now under Austin's ownership, interestingly enough) is still very much in evidence. If you want an easy ride, there are plenty of shitty bands out there for you. If not, "Never Give In" poses a daunting but ultimately worthwhile challenge.