Review
Turnstile’s migration from basement sweatboxes to festival stages here abandons any remaining obligation to hardcore orthodoxy, doubling down instead on total stylistic dispersion. By handing their catalog to an erratic coalition of outside conspirators, the Baltimore outfit treats their songwriting not as fixed scripture, but as ductile raw material for ambient drift, club pulses, and pop pastiche.
The results ricochet with purposeful whiplash across twenty-two divergent tracks. Brendan Yates’ vocal stems sit isolated against the sleek four-on-the-floor kick of "Sole," before getting battered by fractured, mechanized distortions on "Dull." Traditional power chords vanish for long stretches, ceding ground to airy woodwinds, skittering breakbeats, and raspy, freeform saxophone squalls unraveling "Slowdive." When physical violence does resurface, it arrives not from the band's own amps, but through the blast beats and guttural growls of Dying Fetus tearing through "Birds."
Surrendering this much operational control turns the project into an uneven, sprawling victory lap, but its audacity holds up. Whether draped in reverberating piano chords on "Seein' Stars" or stripped back to slow-burning, gospel-flocked vocal runs on "Ceiling," the underlying melodic architecture bends without breaking.
