With a name like Merrick’s Tusk, I’d expected something proggy for some reason, especially given the album’s title, which conjures some sense of ‘big’ themes and sonic expanses. But no, the Nottingham masters of creative misprision (Joseph Merrick may have been dubbed ‘The Elephant Man’ but definitely didn’t have a tusk among his deformities) are also purveyors of post-hardcore, combining melody and atmosphere with emotional power and anthemic choruses.
Arriving a decade into their career, their debut album is nothing if not solid, and encapsulates everything they’ve been doing over the course of their career and a slew of EPs.
And herein lies the album’s biggest shortcoming: it doesn’t feel like it offers anything new, and treads the same template ground the band have trodden since forever. They do it well, but they very much play to formula, which inevitably gets tired over time.
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