Album Review: Ithaca – 'They Fear Us'
UK based metal band Ithaca are taking no prisoners with the release of their second album under Hassle Records, ‘They Fear Us’.
Ithaca is a not a band for the faint-hearted or feart of mind. If their first-album tour alongside indie stars Big Thief didn’t catch enough people’s curiosity, this album - which comprises nine tracks of genre-bending hardcore - should do the trick. They are set to challenge listeners on what metal is and the people assumed to make it. Their musical influences are as proudly eclectic as a Woolworth’s pick and mix: genres such as blackgaze, 70’s prog, new-wave and post-punk are given the Ithaca treatment and artists such as Father John Misty, Bon Iver and Alice and Chains are noted as influences for this newest release.
Described as ‘a glitter-covered nailbomb’, the band take pains to assert their queer, gender non-conformist identities not only throughout the album but across the metal scene itself. They harness their implacable urge to test and challenge a stultified, male-dominated music scene awash with racism, sexism and misogyny that is too often hidden behind dressing room doors, with an aesthetic that celebrates and subverts expectation.
Opening with a punch to the face in ‘In the Way’ the listener is carried through a musical labyrinth throughout the album. Screams sink into a soft Siouxsie-Sioux intimacy in ‘Number 5’ then pick back up again in ‘Fluorescence’. ‘The penultimate ‘You Should Have Gone Back’ dips you into a prog-rock bath of mellifluous guitars before lead vocalist Djamilia Boden takes you by the shoulders and screams into your face ‘we’ve got a problem’. The album ends softly: ‘Held, Be Held’ is a comforting track that leaves you on a stunned high.Boden screams unashamedly from her pedestal throughout the album with lyrics that centre around themes of ‘discovering and harnessing inner power, strength, revenge and retribution’. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – they maintain a unique sound that sets them apart from others in the hardcore scene.
They Fear Us is the musical offering of a fuck-you. It is proud, unapologetic. This is the work of a band that recognises that music can be a means to escape the entrapments of gender and sexuality and their look, which is maximalist and bright ‘reflects one of the big themes of the album: challenging masculine power structures both in a general but also deeply personal sense.’
The album cover puts Boden front and centre in a bamboo chair and has the retro look of a late 70’s Stevie Nicks but their attention to their aesthetic is not necessarily superficial. The album is carefully considered attack on a music scene that lets so many women and gender-queer artists down. It takes you (in a chokehold) and doesn’t let go for half an hour. They Fear Us is for metal-core lovers but is also a testament to those that want more from music: Ithaca is a voice to get you back on your feet.
Words by Kathryn Blake
