The Body Politic – “contr:addiction” [Album Review]

The Body Politic’s latest shares a lot in common with Periphery. Both bands mix djent riffs with hardcore screaming and atmospheric sections backed up by sung choruses at a higher pitch. If you’re not a fan of Periphery, you probably won’t love what this band is doing.

It’s a short album at just under 27 minutes, but there is some promise scattered throughout its disjointed selection of tracks. I wasn’t a fan of most of the clean singing present in contr:addiction, but the high croons can work on occasion. There are plenty of decent djent riffs here; however, and most of the screaming sounds fine. Unfortunately, each track is rather incohesive. There sadly isn’t too much flow here, despite the band’s aspirations to be seen as progressive.

Take “Growing Pains”, for example. Throughout the song there are a few cool moments, a decent enough riff and some of the better clean singing found on the record. Despite this, it is all over the place. You can’t nail it down and get properly into it; just as you’ve found a section you enjoy, it’s over before you know it. In this track, towards the end, there is an awesome keyboard solo, but it is ruined by some poorly screamed words that are nonsensically repeated over and over again – the garbled nature of what’s on offer here is frustrating.

There are moments you’ll enjoy, moments you’ll despise and others you’ll merely shrug at. The Body Politic have some decent ideas, but they need to work on fitting them all together as a cohesive, enjoyable whole. There’s some promise here, but contr:addiction is disjointed rather than smart.

contr:addiction Track Listing:

01. Parasoul
02. Akrasia
03. Growing Pains
04. Problem
05. Kindling
06. Signals
07. Dousing

Run Time: 26:58
Release Date: November 17, 2017

View the group’s “Akrasia” music video here.