Australian ragers Thornhill make alt. metal sexy again on enticing third LP, BODIES.
Thornhill write and play like they want to seduce you. The bodies they’re referring to in the title of their third album aren’t lifeless corpses, but warm, breathing, desiring (and possibly naked) ones. The Melbourne quartet’s djent-laden alt. metal thrums with sensual heat and a prickling sense of danger, a faithful reflection of their lyrical themes. There’s desire, there’s lust, but often with an aspect of power play or self-indulgence in the stories frontman Jacob Charlton tells.
These sounds and themes are a continuation of what Thornhill did on their previous record, 2022’s Heroine, which perhaps unsurprisingly showed they’d taken extensive notes on Deftones’ hornier songs. It fell on the side of inspiration rather than imitation, luckily, and they got great material out of it, but now they’ve carved out something that sounds more individual. Kinetic opener DIESEL could shake walls with its chugging guitars and rippling bass, seamlessly transitioning into the sinister charm offensive of Revolver, its barbed riffs contrasting slower, quieter passages where Jacob whisper-sings to someone to 'loosen your resolve'.
The singles are generally the strongest songs here – Silver Swarm is lithe and hot-blooded, nerv is a spiky expulsion of energy, and Obsession is as filthy as they get. There are a couple of weaker moments later – the silky, atmospheric CRUSH is too much of an outlier and feels jarring, whereas by contrast, under the knife doesn’t have enough going on to differentiate it from the other songs. These fade into the background by the time closer For You hits and shows a different facet of Thornhill altogether, opening space for the searing emotion they’re capable of to cut through.
Ultimately, however, their lascivious sense of charisma proves hard to resist – it’s genuine, firstly, and in a crowded field of gloomy peers, their attitude is refreshing. Is this the sexiest rock music has got since Deftones? Just maybe.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Deftones, Moodring, Muse
BODIES is released on April 4 via UNFD
