Album Review: House Vs Hurricane - Crooked Teeth

Although they lost a lead vocalist and a keys player last year, Melbourne's punishing House Vs Hurricane haven't slowed up in the slightest. In fact, if their second album is anything to go by, it's given their sound a newfound maturity. The loss of the at times overpowering synth lines of the past has especially helped them to refine their songs and travel down a far more inviting road of sharp, emotive and breakdown-heavy post-hardcore as opposed to the video game screamo that they were meddling with a few years ago.

The guitar lines are choppy on this second release and run circles around the duelling vocal pair of Ryan McLerie and new rough vocalist Dan Casey for the most part. But when the six-strings pull away from each other and soar in different directions, such as on Moonshine and All We Need, the album really crawls along your inner emotions and pulls at something previously unfound. Lost World, with its compressed breakdowns and layers of harmonies stands up early as a contender for track of the album, while later, Dead Lizard, and its thrash metal bludgeoning gives it a decent run for its money.

However, it's not until finale, Bare Bones, that the band really breaks away from Crooked Teeth's general formula, and the results stand up as arguably the high point of the whole record. Recalling the atmospherics of Deftones' Chino Moreno's Team Sleep project, the track, although a bit soppy in its early stages, is a refreshing end to an unrelenting album and quickly makes you want to hit the repeat button and take the ride all over again.