Band:	Meth.
Album:	Shame
Style:	Sludge metal
Release date:	February 2024

01. Doubt
02. Compulsion
03. Blush
04. Give In
05. Cruelty
06. Shame
07. Blackmail

Why is there a metal album about shame but no metal album about happiness?

Why metal gets associated with negative emotions is a discussion far too grand for the scope of this one review, and obviously positive emotions do find their way into metal, especially in the less extreme genres. But for the most part, the reason why metal has been largely an underground counter-cultural phenomenon is the association with the negative. More than just its overt shock value, it is an outlet for those emotions, where some people feel repulsed by the emotional resonance and some feel catharsis. It's not like metal is the only kind of music to do that. Sadness can be found in most genres, and I've had intense emotional reactions to non-metal stuff like Swans' "Failure" or La Dispute's "All Our Bruised Bodies and the Whole Heart Shrinks" or more recently Amigo The Devil's "Closer", but I can't deny that a lot of it came more to the lyrics as much as the vibe also took part of that. And yet, negative emotions at their most intense feel like they need intense music.

And here we have a metal album titled "Shame". Shame is one hell of a negative emotion. I don't think that I could think of one song that evokes shame, not that second-hand embarrassment kind, but the kind that is so dehumanizing that you'd wish earth would swallow you whole at that moment. If you had me listen to this album without telling me its title and asked me to name three emotions I'd associate with it, I probably wouldn't have named "shame" to be among them. But now that I have the association through the album title and the track titles, and having read the press release for the album that go into how non-fictional the themes and stories of addiction and mental illness on this album are, and how the cover depicts the bliss of youth before shame and guilt and responsibility take it away irrevocably, the album feels even more emotionally evocative and that specificity is responsible.

Of course, people who listen to metal on the regular are likely to become accustomed to the extreme emotions on display and feel neither catharsis nor repulsion, but indifference. I think despite everything that went into instilling emotional impact in this album, the vast majority of the listeners, even yours truly, will fall into this camp. A sludge metal album is a sludge metal album. A riff and a scream and a thumping drum evoke emotion, but they're also just cool to listen to if you understand extreme metal's musical appeal. Thus, musically, Meth.'s Shame is a pretty interesting album too. Previously taking more from punkier genres like screamo, grind, and mathcore, while also introducing elements of sludge and noise and ambient, Shame finds the band pushing further into being more overtly metal. Punk elements still remain but more pronounced are the noise rock ones, a genre already very closely associated with sludge metal, and the mathcore elements feels so metallic this time around that it sounds much closer to something like a dash of dissonant death metal. The way the less crushing moments rely on very specific percussive rhythms to build tension alongside the exasperated vocals particularly felt like something Meth. did extremely well.

Even if Shame might be to most another metal album to listen while checking new releases (or old releases, depending on when you find it), I think for most of us there was a time when a metal album was there for us when no one else was, that made us feel like something out there understands the ache we were feeling. There's a non-zero chance that Shame could be that album for someone.