Infall Wires "Far" to Explode in Society's Face (Early Album Stream)

“We’ll die alone / Cursing our opinions,” Italy’s Infall shriek at the end of “Triumphant March,” and given how this year has been going, they’re probably right. While much of the metal world has been digging in on either side of the Great Twitter Wars, Infall, like other seething hardcore acts, is holding a magnifying glass close enough to society that they threaten to burn it like so many ants. Lest the contemporaneousness of their new album Far be called into question, the video for “Triumphant March” is a snap-snap-snap journey through social media showcasing everything from humanity’s flaws to rockets being launched.

Indeed, it’s contemporary conflict that seems to undergird Far. Whether that’s literal, as on “Spring Peace,” or “Forever Mine,” about a personal war against grief. The album’s title is fairly literal inasmuch as it shows us all at our most divided — “Love, Karina” in particular sizes up modern humanity’s social media habit and the ways it estranges us from one another through the very literal story of a girl being hit by a train while taking the selfie. This is just one narrative showing the fundamental brokenness of life in the present day. Says the band:

Far talks about distance in all its forms. The album begins with the memory of a loved one undergoing pain therapy, during which emerges the infinite distance that separates two people apparently very close. From this point on, each song represents various manifestations of “distance”: social, cultural, ideological, religious and, sometimes, of the individual [them]self from [their] own being.

There’s a slight irony in the fact that the entirety of Far is right up in the listeners face. Recorded in Bologna’s Vacuum Studio and mixed by Kurt Ballou, this helping of hardcore with hints of grime and math seasoning is immediate and frenetic. The end of “Out of the Blue” heading into “Man Down,” the album’s most morose composition, is the only moment where Infall lean back into the void rather than zooming right up on its ugly emptiness for all to see.

For anyone seeking a record that balances distance and overwhelm with social critique and immediacy, Infall has wired together a musical explosive device that bottles the manic nihilism of 2022. Stream it now below before the whole thing goes boom on November 14.

…