You Can Be My Wave

Back in 2020, Chicago band Snooze suffered a great loss. Cameron Grom, the band's bassist, creative partner, and more importantly, great friend died after battling significant health challenges. One would expect the need to take time away and process, but instead, guitarist and vocalist Logan Voss took it upon himself to finish whatever material the band might have been working on around this time. A few months later, Voss would release Still, a bright and hopeful mini-album that serves as a touching send-off to his late bandmate. Just under five years later, Snooze is back with a new album and a new lineup consisting of Voss, Alex Kennedy (drums), Demetri Wolfe (bass), and Michael Stover (guitar, vocals). While it looks like this may be the start of a fresh new chapter, this new album suggests that there are still some unprocessed feelings.

Judging from the coarse title alone, I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE promises to be an emotionally frank reflection on loss, and the band delivers on that promise. Snooze's depiction of grief is very well-rounded; guiding listeners through passages that are intensely angry, confused, and resentful, but also takes the time to celebrate life and cherish fond memories. A good chunk of the album is consumed in the former, scored by disorienting rhythmic patterns, angst filled riffs, and for the first time on a Snooze record, harsh vocals. Both Voss and Stover take part in the throat shredding with Voss bringing a more guttural performance when compared to his shrill counterpart. There are moments, however, that feel very inline with the flowery, cheerful vibes that were all over Still. This includes the incredibly uplifting choir vocals towards the beginning of Without, the playful ascending and descending guitar lines towards the end of Harked, or the exuberant ad-lib vocal riffing that concludes Expectation and On a Superstition.

The band has spared no effort to make it emotionally compelling, and it is brimming with Snooze's usual mathy technicality. However, what takes this album one step further is how they've created a completely seamless, full-album experience. It's fairly similar in presentation to the band's 2019 album Familiaris, although that album feels gapless as opposed to seamless. With I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE, you get the sense that this was written as one long epic piece, separated into chapters merely for our listening and navigation convenience. To achieve this, the band has to get creative with their compositions to essentially do the rock band equivalent of beat matching. A prime example is the transition between On a Superstition and Overheard From the Void. The former concludes with these grand crescendos that are occasionally interrupted by stormy outbursts. In the final seconds, we are fully immersed in a typhoon which matches up perfectly with the thrashy opening to Overheard From the Void. That's just one example, but rarely is there a transition that sucks the energy or momentum out of the listening experience. This fine attention to detail, more than any other component, really communicates how important and personal this piece of work is.

I really do appreciate the lengths Snooze goes to to create such a grandiose, holistic album, but if I'm being honest, these qualities can also be a double-edged sword. For one, I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE is fifty-four minutes of densely packed rhythmic algorithms in which the intricacies in the musicianship begin to wash over you as time advances. The progression is also very linear, always looking ahead to the next passage, never reprising old ideas or motifs. By design, there's a real lack of earworm riffs, hooks, and choruses, resulting in standout moments instead of standout songs. Although, with the relentless pace of this album, the moments that elicit maximum excitement are fleeting. I still find this to be an enjoyable record, but that enjoyment hinges on recognizing that I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.