Another year, another album from The Anix. It’s nothing short of impressive with how quickly artists are able to pump out music compared to when I was growing up with what felt like years between albums from artists. Although it could partially be due to the sheer availability of music creation and listening platforms these days, forcing their hand to create more and more to remain relevant.

The newest album from The Anix is titled GRAPHITE, and if you’re familiar with his sound from previous albums, this definitely won’t change your mind one way or another about him. It all sounds very familiar while still being mostly fresh. I’d argue that this album probably has the strongest opener out of anything I’ve heard from him with Still Standing, and then quickly goes into territory that sounds right at home in his catalog.

Something that’s always been a bit of a problem that these past few albums suffer from is that if I put one on and start doing something else, it becomes background noise. I suppose that’s arguably true of any music, but this particular album I tried listening to several times while working and had trouble realizing when it was over since it’s on loop and rarely feels like it has much variation. Of course this isn’t true, I just needed to sit down with it away from distractions, but it’s rare that I get time to do so.

In fact, as strong as the album opens, it then closes with a wholly unique sound to the rest of the experience. Early in the album you hear Die With You, which is fine. But Die Without You takes many of the same sounds while almost turning it into another genre that feels much more stripped down and as if it belongs in the ending scene of a movie, or in a trailer for some cinematic blockbuster where the dialogue is muted for cinematic purposes. I listened to this album several times without ever reaching the end because things came up, so it was a welcome ending once I finally got to hear it. I just wish there was a couple more songs that really changed things up like this one.

I don’t want to say that the album is lazy, because there really is a lot going on throughout. There’s even a lot more of the vocals that I liked from previous albums throughout the tracks this time around. But listening front to back, and then while I write this, I have a hard time coming up with new critiques for the album that I haven’t brought up in the past. As much as I appreciate this sticking to the usual sound, walking the line of Deftones’ moody ambience with the lofty singing doesn’t give me a lot to look forward to from song to song. What I mean by that is I like to have a few songs throughout a track list that I look forward to, and then grow to appreciate the surrounding songs. The standouts for me this time around are the very beginning and end, with a lot of similar sounding tracks in-between that fail to differentiate themselves or make me look at their title.

Do You Remember slows things down a bit, Hideaway has a Stabbing Westward industrial feel to it (this one has grown on me), and If This World is With You starts out heavy, but they all find their groove quickly and stay there. There’s a lot of subtlety to each one, and depending on how you’re listening, the experience will differ quite a bit – I recommend against using your phone or laptop speaker to really get the most out of this album – but even twenty listens in, I couldn’t remember how any particular song went without listening to it.

The title track starts off sounding like a Nine Inch Nails song, and I’m wondering how different the song would sound if Brandon chose to sing it differently. It’d be interesting to hear it sung more aggressively than the dreamlike voice he uses throughout most of the album. There are also a couple of features on this outing, including GXG and Aura Shred. Parasite (featured at the top of this post) utilizes the juxtaposition of heavy and fast sounds with Brandon’s slow and soft voice well, while Illusion of Control goes down a synthwave direction, almost crossing into “game” territory at points. Out of all the songs, this one sounds like it’d belong on FiXT Neon the most.

Since my interview with Brandon last year, whenever I listen to his music I can’t help but think about his statement on slitting his wrists while listening to the music. Some songs do this better than others, such as Nothing Matters. This takes the vocal musings and fades in and out regularly with the ever present beat droning on, as if you’re going in and out of consciousness from blood loss. And of course, hearing the words nothing matters over and over certainly helps. Defender goes off the rails a bit with its focus on guitar and drums opposed to electronica, but it still has plenty of what you’ve heard throughout the rest of the album.

I’ll be the first to admit that what I think I want isn’t always what I truly want. It’s why Kickstarters and the like are so dangerous for artists. As much as agency is nice, most people don’t know what works well in a game, music, or movies. In previous reviews, I mentioned it’d be cool to get more songs with this type of singing, and what I got was a whole album of it. What it resulted in was an experience that felt stuck in the same sound with hardly any differentiation unless I listened without distraction, regardless of what was happening around it. Ignoring the lyrics, the sound of the voice is a nice complement to some of the songs, but it drags the album down as a whole since nothing stands out because of it. Even my favorite songs on this album don’t come close to Interchanger, which I’ve praised plenty previously.

As I said at the beginning, if you like The Anix, you’ll most likely enjoy GRAPHITE. In fact, I’d be surprised if you didn’t. The production value is high, and he can belt out some songs while managing to keep a softness to his voice, altered or not. But three albums in with FiXT, I’m ready for something different. I don’t want to hear tracks that could just as easily be from the last two. Of course, threading the needle between keeping the sound you’re known for and venturing elsewhere without alienating your fan base is a difficult one. But I’m ready for him to take the next step in the journey.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Excellent Production
• Lots of Subtleties to Discover on Repeat Listens
• Solid Bookends

Cons

• Lacking Variation Between Tracks
• No Standout Earworms

GRAPHITE was created by The Anix under the FiXT label. It went on presale June 5th, 2020, and will be available on June 26th, 2020. The album was provided to us for review. If you’d like to see more of The Anix, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth your time, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great album that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate music, please let us know.

 

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