This Is The Glasshouse Returns Guitars Blazing on "Before Machinery"

It'd be fair to expect This Is The Glasshouse to rest on their laurels after As Small As Ants, their breakthrough album released last year. However, after setting out their sound on that album—one bristling with strings, brass, saxophones, and all the percussion you could think of—This Is The Glasshouse has returned to cover new ground. "Before Machinery" keeps the dense sound of As Small As Ants, but trades its chamber arrangements for layers of guitar and noise evolving across eight and a half minutes.

Even with this reduced instrumental toolbox, the song manages to cover impressive ground. What begins as a moody post-hardcore track soon accelerates into a noisy churn that's equal parts mechanical whirring and shifting tectonic plates. That tension of natural and technological forces is carried over in Ezekiel Dukart's fiery lyrics, which lament the demystification of the natural world through science:

"Stars now decorated by science and math / Turned into hydrogen and helium gas"

After a slight reprieve, the song bounces back for some of the thunderous, most brutal minutes This Is The Glasshouse has put to record yet. It's an exciting direction for the band, which has flirted with heavier sounds before, but hasn't yet given them so much space in their music. With "Before Machinery", This Is The Glasshouse has proven they can harness a noisier palette of sounds and still create the compelling music they've made a name for.

Don't miss the extras here, either. B-side "Untitled Chicken Song" hems closer to As Small As Ants in its lyrics and weaving sax and horn lines, but plucky synths provide a little twist. Meanwhile, the Bandcamp-exclusive demo "A Dog In The Ground" has possibly the craziest drums in a Glasshouse song yet.

"Before Machinery" is available now on streaming services and digitally on Bandcamp. 867 comes out on November 3rd, 2024.