If the human condition and the certainty of uncertainty that accompanied it were a motion picture, WIRE LOVE’s latest effort 'Leave the Bones' would be the soundtrack. Hardcore-rock music often falters when it comes to blending musicality and intensity and presenting a cohesive (and more importantly edifying) listening experience. It often results in a seasonless soup of distorted bedlam, aimless screams with no real definition and start-stop patterns almost entirely void of anything resembling a groove. This is not that, and Germany's hardcore scene would do good to exalt what this group has on offer.

From a production standpoint, Leave the Bones has a lot of meat on its bones. The guitars and bass lock in tight together with a less-is-more approach to distortion and overdrive that provides clear definition without sacrificing weight; in other words, WIRE LOVE is heavy…really heavy.

The album opens with a delayed punch in the face with ‘Symmetry’ and ‘Red Dress’, the latter of which opens with an eerily beautiful preamble that is way too short because continuing with a brutal onslaught of a groove that should maintain the energy of any mosh-pit. From then on the barrage is maintained at a clip that is as unforgiving as it is dynamic.

What truly makes this collection of tracks is its ability to maintain its intensity even when it drops its density. ‘Shadow’, for instance, sports an entire passage in a melancholic haze bookended by relentlessly heavy grooves with screaming lead lines everywhere. The succeeding ‘Luminace Forever’ then turns them up to eleven with a vengeful ferocity and there is no turning back from there.

Take the infectious grooves of GLASSJAW, the relentless energy of early ATREYU, with a splash of BOTCH and you will get WIRE LOVE. If this album is any indication, Germany’s post-hardcore scene is in for a revitalisation that only comes around once in a blue moon…watch out for these guys.

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