Band:	You Win Again Gravity
Album:	Into The Dancing Blue
Style:	Djent, Post-Hardcore, Progressive metal
Release date:	August 04, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Aurelian
02. Curious Fake
03. Paper Bodies
04. Suppression
05. Character Arc
06. Shadowboxing
07. Lights To Leave Behind
08. Recursive
09. Every Scar A Brushstroke
10. The Dancing Blue
11. Cerulean

You Win Again Gravity, presumably named after the Futurama quote, are a bit less playful and more emotionally charged than one might expect from a group inspired by a sitcom (although, to be fair, one can’t accuse Futurama of shying away from emotional material, what with the ending of Jurassic Bark and all).

The Windsor ensemble, who have existed in various forms since drummer James Mackenzie initially formed the group in 2004, have had a gradual journey towards Into The Dancing Blue, their second full-length album. Several EPs in the early half of the 2010s were eventually followed by 2017 debut record Anonymity, and the first single featured on this new album, “Lights To Leave Behind”, came out over 4 years ago. It’s clearly been a long road, but ultimately it’s all about the destination; what have You Win Again Gravity pulled off with Into The Dancing Blue?

To give some idea of how this album sounds (and give a cue for the non-target audience to leave), I would describe the sound of Into The Dancing Blue as one that can be categorized to varying degrees under the prog-metal, djent and post-hardcore umbrellas, with a healthy slab of math rock in there too. The album is too metallic to count as post-hardcore, too tethered to post-hardcore/metalcore to nestle gently within the confines of regular prog, and a bit too heavy on the math rock to be straight djent. Obviously, each of these styles has sufficient overlap with the others for this to be a fairly natural combination of sounds, but having this range does help You Win Again Gravity avoid excessive comparisons to any one particular band.

The record starts off in nicely understated fashion; while there are syncopated chugs during “Aurelian”, they’re relatively muted and too slow to be distractingly convoluted, which allows the listener to focus on the atmospheric modern prog sound, emotional vocals taking centre stage until a heavy climax, in which melodic guitar leads flesh out a mix initially built upon clean textures. It’s a really solid start; I would have enjoyed it if the album, which shifts fairly quickly into livelier territory with the post-hardcore/djent intro to “Curious Fake”, spent a bit more of its runtime in similarly slow but emotionally charged terrain, but there are reprisals of this vibe later on, particularly during the powerful climax of “Suppression”.

Beyond the introduction, You Win Again Gravity get to work with showing off their range of sounds; “Curious Fake” features post-hardcore, math rock and djent, trading off between mathy clean guitar, post-hardcore chorus fare and bulldozing polyrhythms. Naturally, different tracks have different priorities; “Paper Bodies” has a bit more of its runtime dedicated to clean sounds, featuring a chilled-out midsection with simple guitar noodling and some background keyboard sounds, while “Suppression” is more overt with the angular math rock riffing before that aforementioned moving ending, and “Lights To Leave Behind” brings the post-hardcore more to the fore.

While there’s no band I feel overly compelled to compare You Win Again Gravity to, there are a few that do come to mind when listening to Into The Dancing Blue. Probably the one that I most frequently find myself thinking of is Karmanjakah, who also have an evocative melodic djent-based sound, and like Karmanjakah I can hear a resemblance to Corelia in the vocals in parts, particularly the clean vocals on songs such as “Character Arc” and “Recursive”. There’s also a few moments scattered across the album that took my mind to Inmazes-era Vola, such as in some heavier parts of “Every Scar A Brushstroke”.

These sounds are all brought together as parts of a record that, while having a bit more playfulness than the intro to this review indicated, does have quite a lot of stirring feeling imbued into most of the songs, and it comes off really nicely. I’ve already mentioned some of the standout songs here in “Suppression” and “Every Scar A Brushstroke”, but another one I enjoy quite a lot is “Shadowboxing”, which incorporates some shimmering post-rock tremolos in tandem with meaty djent chugs, and has a nice sequence of clean guitar/piano melodies trading back and forth with heavier riffs.

There are occasional moments on the album that don’t win me over; “Curious Fake” falls foul of one of my pet peeves in having a last-chorus modulation that dampens its impact, while “Lights To Leave Behind” is a bit too busy and spreads itself slightly thin. On the whole, though, I like this album quite a lot, and with it capped off by a solid closing song (“Cerulean”) that shows off the band’s heavy and soft sides, Into The Dancing Blue gives quite a lot to digest and enjoy until You Win Again Gravity’s next album, although on past form that could take a while to come.