Upper Wilds

Stargazing Brooklyn noise-rock cosmonauts Upper Wilds — the power-trio led by Parts & Labor co-founder Dan Friel — return with another set of lean anthems filtered through a flamethrower. Their speediest, most explosive album yet, Mercury, is a meditation on death, with Friel expounding on his brush with skin cancer, climate change, funerals, Henry Kissinger, and a world seemingly on fire. Buoyed by recent tours with acts like Pelican, Uniform, Psychic Graveyard and Savak, the trio’s increased speed is met with a precision that gives every hairpin turn more wallop.

Upper Wilds’ space-rock adventures through their recent albums Mars, Venus, & Jupiter came replete with stories of the heavens and humanity alike. On this fourth installment, the closest planet to the sun, things take a darker turn. The small, barren planet Mercury was named after the gods' speedy messenger and guide to the underworld, and the album syphons Upper Wilds’ fuzz-pop aesthetics into concise, scorched anthems about the brevity and fragility of life with the ferocity of a band playing on the edge of extinction.

Mercury’s molten, non-stop riffing is captured with grit and punch by engineer Travis Harrison (Guided By Voices, The Men) and is bolstered by longtime collaborator/saxophonist and fellow-New York mainstay Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers) and vocalist Erin Dawson of LA-based experimental black metal band Genital Shame. Dawson injects more energy into the shout-chorus of the already blazing standout “Fever” where Tobias’s dizzying EWI (electronic wind instrument) on "Reaper" harkens back to Friel’s own circuit-bent synthesizer glissandos. Jason Binnick’s basslines shine brighter than before dancing in tandem with Friel’s guitar licks on “Death Song #3” and bringing equal parts melody and thunderous weight to “Green-Wood Cemetery.” Jeff Ottenbacher’s drumming oscillates between machine gun fills and sledge hammer pounding, giving each riff more momentum and bite.

As Upper Wilds have explored new horizons both thematically and sonically, the trio have remained grounded by a melodic flair that mirrors their tongue-in-cheek playfulness and an undaunted, fiery attitude. Even as they traverse the deep calderas of mortality, a fear of dying and the grief of being left behind, Upper Wilds’ Mercury revels in the thrill of defying death with ecstatic abandon.