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Mogwai - The Bad Fire review



Reviewer:
N/A

26 users:
6.62
Band: Mogwai
Album: The Bad Fire
Style: Post-rock
Release date: January 24, 2025
A review by: RaduP


01. God Gets You Back
02. Hi Chaos
03. What Kind Of Mix Is This?
04. Fanzine Made Of Flesh
05. Pale Vegan Hip Pain
06. If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others
07. 18 Volcanoes
08. Hammer Room
09. Lion Rumpus
10. Fact Boy

"The By-The-Numbers Fire" more like.

That was pretty direct of me. Well, that and also the fact that there's literally a song named "What Kind Of Mix Is This?" on the album and it echoes how I feel about it should give you a pretty good idea about the muted impact that The Bad Fire had on me. I know it's pretty anticlimactic and unintuitive for me to give the main page spotlight for an album I don't feel too fondly about, maybe more because of inertia and the already shaped familiarity I have with the band. But it's one of my favorite bands and I don't actively dislike the album, so allow me to start over.

Even though the band's profile has been in our database for nearly a decade, it remained the profile of a non-metal band on a metal website, like many others that we have here, until four years ago, with the release of As The Love Continues. I gave the album, and by extension the band's first, main page review, and later that year, me and a fellow writer dedicated the effort for a full scale retrospective article. In both the review and the article I have argued for why this specific non-metal band is significant for the world of metal. But both As The Love Continues, and now The Bad Fire, sit in a weird spot of being both albums that reflect a certain stagnation of excitement, but also albums I appreciate for how unmistakably Mogwai-ish they are.

I've already went over the surface level criticism that I have for The Bad Fire. Some of it is more excusable. Like of course a band that is entering its fourth decade of existence is not suddenly gonna start taking big risks and mostly stick to what they know works. But I also feel that more of the things that worked, worked better on previous records, and even when there are moments on The Bad Fire that do come close to feeling compelling, they run into the more inexcusable issues of a mix that doesn't gel as well with how much the band's music relies on building textures and loud / quiet dynamics.

As far as the songs go, it feels like there are two different approached on The Bad Fire. On one hand there are the songs that contain vocals, with there being more of a dream pop touch and a synth presence in them, but examples like "God Gets You Back" and "Fanzine Made Of Flesh" didn't have the same instant spark in their impact that similar songs from previous records, like "Party In The Dark" and "Ritchie Sacremento" had. On the other hand, the instrumental songs feel more in line with what older fans of the band might expect, a lot of it has a specific mellow melancholy that seemingly emanates from how the band members experiences some more difficult times since the last record, with the strings and synths often being nice touches, the thing that I do appreciate most about them is how it feels like they couldn't be done by any band other than Mogwai, which is more impressive in regards to instrumental music.

Maybe The Bad Fire doesn't find a Mogwai as vital and it's more of an excuse to get on the road on a tour (and I definitely haven't seen Mogwai enough times), but it's nice living in a world where Mogwai still do that.






Written on 03.02.2025 by Doesn't matter that much to me if you agree with me, as long as you checked the album out.


Comments

Comments: 1   Visited by: 59 users
03.02.2025 - 17:18
BitterCOld
The Ancient One
Admin
Hadn't thought of Mogwai in a LOOOOOOONG time, going back to Mr. Beast - the album, not the grinning youtube dude. Looks like I still won't be.
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get the fuck off my lawn.

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