EP Review: Car Bomb - Tiles Whispers Dreams
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
New York sonic experimentalists, Car Bomb, have been doing their thing for a quarter of a century now, issuing four full-length records since 2007’s Centralia, each taking leave of the initial metalcore starting point, moving into a mathy djent sound and incorporating progressive elements until they have the ferocious bite of a Meshuggah / Dillinger hybrid.
Tiles Whispers Dreams is the band’s first new music to be issued since 2019’s Mordial, and features three tracks, coming in at less than twelve-minutes. It might be short, but the intensity and unbridled Meshuaggah-worship is undeniable.
Elliot Hoffman has surely studied intimately the drumming patterns of Tomas Haake as he manages to give as close an account of those inhuman polyrhythms as I imagine would be possible without closer scrutiny. His percussion on opener, Blindsides, and on the central track, Paroxysm, lays the complex and angular platform for the rest of Car Bomb to follow.
Greg Kubacki’s guitars weave around Elliot’s rhythmic dissonance, sometimes locking into the basslines of Jon Modell while, at others, taking flight and bringing everything back down to earth with eccentric bends on Blindside and some even crazier passages on Paroxysm. Jon’s bass maintains as much a sense of order as can be expected, and vocalist Michael Dafferner’s best Jens impression is only part of the story.
The closing title track finds those Meshuggah homages toned down, bringing in some groove elements among the constantly shifting tempos. Although Tiles Whispers Dreams leans into Car Bomb’s unashamed inspiration of the Swedish master’s style, to pull it off well takes a fundamental understanding of what makes it work; and, clearly, the band have that and then some.
Hopefully, these three tracks suggest album number five is headed our way soon and this appetite-wetter couldn’t manage to get you more stoked up for that eventuality.
