90%
After a gulf of years wider than the lifespan of most bands, The Butterfly Effect has finally released their fourth album.
Fourteen years since The Final Conversation of Kings left fans and critics scrabbling for adjectives and subsequent events left most wondering if that conversation had indeed been the band’s final one, The Butterfly Effect had fired off this big silver bullet that is sure to return them to the upper echelons of Australian rock music.
IV bristles with furious energy and dark emotion, presenting perhaps their heaviest music since their very early recordings while further exploring expansive, progressive horizons.
The singles so far have showcased the expressive range of The Butterfly Effect on this release. Nil by Mouth crackles with a new hard-hitting energy like Korn jamming it up with Refused, Clinton Boge offering a vocal that veers from a creeping near-whisper to almost a roar; So Tired is a feast of slamming metallic riffs and soaring vocal melodies. Visiting Hours and Unbroken lean more to rock than metal, dripping with raw, yearning emotion.
For most of IV, however, The Butterfly Effect is a dark and heavy beast. Wave of Tides crashes in with a juddering stop-start riff and Great Heights throws up the album’s heaviest moments, capped off with a towering lead guitar break from Kurt Goedhart who is a veritable riff factory right across the album. Ben Hall and Glenn Esmond nail down the foundations for Goedhart and Boge to play out each song’s tussle between darkness and light, sounds and space, frustration and hope, energy and emotion untangling themselves from the stark miasma of The Butterfly Effect’s churning undertow.
Staring at darkness and still shining with hope, IV brings every facet of The Butterfly Effect’s creative muse to the fore with a form and function that will touch fans of all their music so far and gather new ones to the flock. Superb.
