By Rich Hobson
With the increasing prevalence of electronic samples and drops in mainstream rock, sometimes it feels just right to flick on a meat and potatoes rock record and lose yourself to a world of slick riffs and thick grooves. That’s exactly what ‘Sun Rose’ by Belgian trio My Diligence offers – albeit riffs with a cosmic bent that seem to take the template of Kyuss and Mastodon and crank up the weirdness factor to such a degree that it makes every other band seem completely bland by comparison.
In trying to compare this band to similarly weird-minded oddballs, every band seems to come up short in describing the ball-lightning effect My Diligence have conjured on Sun Rose. If you were to take the ambitious scope of ‘Songs For The Deaf’-era Queens Of The Stone Age and meld it to the sheer cosmic heaviness of Turbowolf’s self-titled debut, you’d be on the right road and yet somehow still miles away from where My Diligence exist.
Quite simply, this goes well beyond the realms of mere stoner or alt rock – ‘Hunt The Hunter’ opens to an almost thrashy beat, before going full cosmic Mastodon with an explosion of riffs and power that will set the spine quivering in delight. It is a cacophonous buffet of finesse and strength, the band locking in tight enough to squeeze out diamonds every time the groove kicks in. It sets the tone of the record from here on out; unpredictable, brilliant and absolutely batshit-for-bananas in both instrumentation and performance.
In execution, the riffs and song structures seem to owe more to the ambitious scope of post-rock than they do to the linear formats of traditional rock. But, with each vocal line comes a sense of embedding hooks – each chorus ready to infect the brain and have the listener singing along in no time. Key to it all is a sense of atmosphere and structure, each song building so that when crescendos do come it feels like the triumphant moment the record breaks out and reaches for something far beyond the musicianship of standard radio rock. From the slow-burn build of ‘An Asteroidal Arrow’ to the CKY-like bounciness of ‘So Pretty So Cruel’, My Diligence know their way around structure enough to ensure that each explosive release feels euphoric whilst invoking enough mass appeal that you could imagine hearing the latter blaring over a radio, or on a festival stage to thousands of braying fans.
And ultimately – for all of its oddness – such mainstream ambition and appeal doesn’t elude My Diligence. For every bit of madness the band indulge in, each song still tears the airwaves up in such a way as to elicit the visceral pleasure of good old fashioned rock n roll, Sun Rose standing out as a record which doesn’t rely on the past, but courts its best elements anyway. There are no half measures on ‘Sun Rose’, nor a sense of treading water or trying to follow the paths of those who came before; instead My Diligence create their own path, bulldozing everything on their way towards sonic nirvana.
- ‘Sun Rose’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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