Album Review: LUGOSi – The Scars
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Parisian post-hardcore band, LUGOSi is all set to release their sophomore album The Scars this month, and to lay their collective hearts bare for all to hear. To do so they shatter the expectations a listener may have when confronted by the genre tag and load these nine new tunes with all manner of influences from punk to hardcore, and from mathcore to experimental jazz and noise.
Debut record, Inconsolable, landed in 2022 and quickly found the band sharing stages with Svalbard, The Armed and Sick of It All among others, yet for this second record, the band have looked to delve deeper into their world view and the individual’s place therein.
Matches opens The Scars with a hard-edged punk attitude and a mathcore level of utter madness. Raw emotion lives in every lyric and in every driving rhythm. The turmoil is interrupted momentarily by the inclusion of a gentle, jazz passage, closing with a cascading multi-tracked vocal finale. All four members of the band contribute vocals and the layering gives a haunting effect. A Taste of Chaos follows in a similar vein, but with less wild variation and with more compulsive, driving rhythms.
Edgy guitars from Fabien Claes and Adrian Verdier give Kate Whispers an alternative feel, the switches in genre creating a morose composition without ever allowing the listener to get comfortable in one sound. It’s heart-breaking in its rawness and would be in danger of collapse were it not for bassist Arthur Bercovitz and drummer Lucas Joly combining to lay a solid foundation.
Arthur’s bass leads the charging assault that is The Fire and it boot-to-the-face raging intensity. Vocals become narration and The Armed’s Patrick Shirosishi provides a searing solo as the coda.
Mental health issues have always played a significant role in LUGOSi’s work and The Scars locks two of its central tracks to consider the issues from divergent angles. Another Downer is another raw, aggressive tune, raging as though doing so drowns out the noise of the condition; is there anything to be read into the lapping water vibes of the track’s outro section? That’s in the ear of the beholder, I suppose. That outro forms the bridge to I Must Be Fine, this time looking at the condition from an interior point of view. The more restrained music gives an intimate peek into the mindset of the protagonist, who is constantly trying to reassure themselves through the titular mantra. There are areas of this one where the attempted placation meets the exterior reality in a tumultuous whirlwind and noise.
And not content with looking at mental health, The Scars closes with a trio of tunes about the nature of mortality, exhaustion and feelings of powerlessness. Ghosts of Christmas Past seems to go through more musical changes than the other tracks on offer, but the sound palette is broad because the subject matter is. Blending many of the genre arrows in LUGOSi’s musical quiver it seeks to address the idea of accepting the inevitability of death. …And Nothing Hurt concerns itself with exhaustion and uses gaps in the music to great effect to represent such a thing through sound.
Closer Everything Ends is largely instrumental with quiet narration being placed low in the mix, brass instruments can be heard in the final moments of the record, bringing it to an intimate close.
The Scars is admittedly a strongly political record, the band make no bones about it, but those politics aren’t thrust into the listeners face, rather are there to be found if looked for. As a musical platter it occupies the same ground as Converge, Birds in a Row and The Armed. Maybe not quiet at the Dillinger Escape Plan level of sonic insanity but give LUGOSi time and they’ll likely get there.
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