Another Language | ||||
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Studio album by This Will Destroy You | ||||
Released | September 12, 2014 | |||
Recorded | 2013-14 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 47:01 | |||
Label | Suicide Squeeze, Hobbledehoy | |||
Producer | John Congleton | |||
This Will Destroy You chronology | ||||
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Singles from Another Language | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Aggregate scores | |
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 72/100 |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
Alternative Press | |
Consequence of Sound | B- |
Exclaim! | 7/10 |
Kerrang! | |
Pitchfork Media | 7.2/10 |
PopMatters | 6/10 |
Another Language is the third studio album by American post-rock band This Will Destroy You. It was released on September 12, 2014, by Suicide Squeeze Records and Hobbledehoy Record Co. Another Language was preceded by the digital release of two singles, "Dustism" and "Invitation".
According to a press release published by Suicide Squeeze Records, the album was recorded after a "prolonged vacuous dark period that threatened to break both the band and the members themselves". In February 2013, one of the band's guitarists, Jeremy Galindo, said that the band had started writing the next studio album. Nine months later, the band said they were halfway done with the recording process. In February 2014, the band's bassist Donovan Jones reported that they were still working on the album. This is the last album to feature Donovan Jones and Alex Bhore after they left the band in late May 2016.
According to the band, Another Language's sound is "more upbeat and rhythmic" than their previous work. They also described the sound of the album with the genre "doomgaze", a portmanteau of the words doom metal and shoegaze. Fred Thomas of AllMusic described the sound of the album as "far heavier" than the "tense, brooding post-rock" on the band's previous work. He characterized the sound of Another Language as "cinematic" post-rock influenced by doom metal and shoegaze, and called the production "more intricate" and "otherworldly". Thomas also praised the band's "always airtight sense of dynamics". Matt Bobkin of Exclaim! labeled the album's sound as post-rock, but acknowledged that the band seemed to be moving away from that sound.
The album's first track, "New Topia", "grows from laid-back rhythms and gentle bell sounds into a slow, pounding wail". Thomas found that the production of the track was influenced by drone metal, and the other sounds "blur into a hungry wash of delay and toothy noise". "Dustism" was characterized by "dubbed-out drums and high-pitched feedback synths", while "Invitation" features "rolling, distorted rhythms and faraway guitar sounds". "Serpent Mound" features an ambient opening followed by "face-melting melodic guitar lines with a solid wave of fuzzy, distorted sound and crashing drums", described by Bobkin as "doomgaze". The album's closing track, "God's Teeth", features ambient sounds that were compared to the works of Brian Eno and William Basinski.