Band:	Impure Wilhelmina
Album:	Antidote
Style:	Post-hardcore, Post-metal
Release date:	May 21, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

01. Solitude
02. Midlife Hollow
03. Gravel
04. Dismantling
05. Jasmines
06. Vicious
07. Torrent
08. Unpredicted Sky
09. Antidote
10. Everything Is Vain

It's hard to believe that Impure Wilhelmina have been around for more than two decades, and that they're only now getting their due.

I find it very odd that a band with such a great run over the past two decades, and that have been signed to a label as big as Season Of Mist are still not that much of a household name, even among post-metal fans. It seems that this has been getting remedied a bit since their aforementioned signing, with 2017's Radiation also being the album that introduced Impure Wilhelmina to me, and the album that they were touring for when I saw them in that cramped basement pub show. I know, it's pretty unfair, but listening to this, it makes a bit of sense and it's a feeling that is hard to put your finger on. Let me try to make some sense of it.

This could be called post-metal, but I don't think I can name any other post-metal band that sounds like this. Also this isn't really post-hardcore either, nor atmospheric sludge, nor anything you can really easily label. It's close but not quite for anything I can try to name it. There's a lot of progressive and alternative and indie rock that so fully informs the songwriting on this album. I've seen this called "the metal version of The Smiths", which, as big of a Smiths fan as I am, puts a bitter taste in my mouth because it reminds me of Morrissey's existence. Like, it is on the border between being a metal album and a rock one, being hazy in a way that is close but still clearly distinct from something gaze-y, complete with some swirling post-rock and some riveting blackened hardcore. And even if post-hardcore is a big part of the sound, there's way way more in the "post-" part than in the "-hardcore" part, even if it's a "post" sound that isn't always replaceable by "post-metal" or "post-rock" or "post-punk". In short: it kinda feels like it's own thing despite being so so close to a lot of stuff.

And I think that might explain it. It's intelligent music, really well-done, and with a lot of emotional weight, but it feels a wee bit uncomfortable. Like it acts upon a lineage of sound that is just slightly different than the one that music actually followed in the past two decades. It's music that takes a bit more to connect to. And it took twenty years for people to finally connect to it. I feel like I'm not there yet, but there is a lingering feeling that there is a listen in the future in which this will click colossally hard, since, despite my many listens and my participation in one of the band's performances, I haven't yet climbed over than uncanny wall. But I can see over it. I feel those sultry choruses, the velvet vocals, the haze in the production, the post instrumentation and how skillfully it plays around with melodies. I just don't feel their impact in the way I feel that I'm supposed to do. So I also feel like in the future I will shun myself for not feeling as positive to it right now.

I have seen a lot of goth metal bands adding bits of post-rock sensibilities, but you don't as often see post-metal bands adding goth sensibilities. And Antidote has the two standing on footing that gets pretty close to equal. As a result of all that lineage of sound from goth to alt to hardcore to post to whatever, it's such a versatile and emotional record. There's a bleakness and a darkness that feels like it can only be expressed by the goth sounds, but with a revitalized sense of expression coming from the post sounds. And I think this is the part that feels most unique about Antidote. There is nothing here that is too different from what is already out there, but it is different in so man subtle ways that are detectable but difficult to explain. Whether it's the way the styles are blended or the way the different instruments are mixed (or both), it takes a bit to find the way to gel the pieces together nicely in memory.