4 out of 5

Label: Paper Bag Records

Produced by: Alaska B

When you’re both a band and a concept, inevitably… things are going to get confused. The Yamantaka / Sonic Titan collective approached their self-described “Noh-wave” albums – a mushed together term representative of the players’ backgrounds and interest in experimental music – as art, but also clearly wanted to rock out. When they leaned into the sonic spectacle on their debut EP, it was immediately impactful and unique: the operatic quality of something like Ghost without the somewhat overly precious narrative aspects, and also more free to explore the musical edges of their genres, buttressing noiserock roots with intense melody, metal, and cultural touches.

Their followup album, UZU, was stronger in some ways, as the group became more of a group, but this put it at odds with being a concept, and Y//ST also started building up their own lore of sorts; UZU’s sound was more fractured, while arguably becoming more interesting.

Dirt continues all of these trends: it is the best, song by song, album from Y//ST, with each track a standalone experience. So much so… that I can’t even pick out the story that’s being told. While it shouldn’t really knock an album if you’re not aware of some intended narrative – in this case, “the soundtrack for an unreleased Haudenosaunee and Buddhist themed Anime produced in 1987” which takes place on a planet named on UZU – there’s an odd sense of restraint in the sequencing and lyrics, where the former never really achieves a peak (the ebb and flow of songs do not tell a story, or even necessarily create a well-ordered album), and the latter don’t say anything specific enough to latch on to, acting more as emotive additions to a song. Which would be fine, but the discrepancy is that you can also sense that there is a story that wants to be told. It creates a bit of distance between the listener and the music, furthered by the mastering, which doesn’t serve up the rock as well as it does the noise.

Meaning: I think Y//ST was ready to be a full-on band, but didn’t quite know how to ditch the concept yet. Thankfully, the songs on Dirt are so good that all this stuff is just a minor quibble, and really doesn’t start to hit until we’re about halfway through the “story,” when the group starts getting even more adventurous with their style – some 80s pop; some 70s prog; some thrash – and can’t quite get it to fit together. But if you take those flashes as they come, they’re impressive: arena-sized sounds that sync back up with Y//ST’s collective and noisy approach – Zeuhl-like quirk married to religious hymns married to post-metal – but with more musical focus that gives us true riffs and choruses and, on the surface, zero of the pretension that that mash-up I just described suggests.