No Can Fly comes back with a raging 7-song storm that is their new album, “Chemicals Forever,” a sludgy alt-rock manifesto steeped in post-hardcore grit, noise-soaked melodies, and the kind of D.I.Y. conviction you cannot fake. At under 33 minutes, "Chemicals Forever" is a love letter to unchecked beauty. The Boise-based trio of Tim Gates (guitar/vocals), Jacob Gates (bass/vocals), and Elliott Kiger (drums) makes clear from the first few seconds that it’s not in search of algorithm-friendly brownie points. They are here to haunt your speakers.
At its heart, the album studies the tension between order and disorder, melody and noise, and clarity and distortion. On “Listener,” the band spreads its entire dynamic range. It’s a slow-building volcano of feeling, in which angular guitars curl around shouted vocals that reverberate with lived-in urgency. By the time the drums fully catch fire, it’s a track in name only, more a seismic event.
The title track, “Chemicals,” is a standout, both explosive and vulnerable. It distills that post-everything energy: a stew of rhythmic friction, feedback-drenched guitarwork, and lyrics oscillating between cryptic and cathartic. You feel it in your bones. Uncomfortableness-in-chaos is an undercurrent of the entire album. Even at its most clamorous peaks, the band still sounds locked in, alive, and urgent. They make it beautiful. The sound feels as much like a release as it does rebellion.
A deep-in-the-red scrutiny on groove, and all things primal, "Chemicals Forever" squeezes it out until it’s real. And it succeeds. Whether you’re partial to Fugazi’s fangs, Sonic Youth’s distortion obeisance, or the melodic eruptions of early post-rock, No Can Fly’s new album delivers right where it counts: in the gut, then the heart.
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