SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: JUSTICE – HYPERDRAMA

JUSTICE
HYPERDRAMA
ED BANGER RECORDS/BECAUSE MUSIC

Justice’s highly anticipated fourth album, Hyperdrama, is now here. It has been more than seven years since their previous album, Woman. Even more, they have released a few singles in anticipation of its release. It is an album that can best be described as an experience that works better in its parts than as a whole, since as an album, this is possibly the most cluttered and dreadful of their discography.

Hyperdrama starts in the beginning with “Neverender”, and if it stopped here, this would’ve been a short but generally better work considering how solid this track is. Even more, what a great opener it is. This is mainly thanks to the beautiful hooking sounds produced here and, even more, the catchy, distant vocals. Sadly, after this, we lead to possibly the worst song on the album, “Generator”, which I can only describe as a jumbled assortment of terrible production and noises. Hyperdrama, as a whole, suffers from the same problem of featuring a few good tracks interspersed with a good amount of rather lifeless ones. In other words, it is, overall, inconsistent.

Hyperdrama often feels like a failed scientific experiment when it chooses more daring paths. The innovation versus quality conundrum is the simplest way to convey this problem. Almost often, it manages to veer more towards attempting innovation with unique sounds than creating a decent album. Although the album manages to pass boldness with its many daring sounds and sequencing decisions, it isn’t enough to save an album full of songs that are, to put it mildly, all over the place. What’s more is that the innovation it attempts, most of the time, falls flat on its face.

This doesn’t even begin to address the issue of songs that have excessive repetition. “Incognito” is a prime example of this, where the group’s sound feels overused to the point that the song becomes painful to listen to. For all Hyperdrama attempts to accomplish, it ends up accomplishing little. Furthermore, most of the tracks, even the better ones, feel longer than they should be, making Hyperdrama a general bore to the finish. This comes from the overuse of specific noises in the production, leaving parts of the album in need of some extreme trimming. Combining all of that, it makes for a truly disappointing album.

Hyperdrama is a truly lackluster and dull listen from start to finish, with even its positives being quite minor to the circus board of things going against it. A work filled with sounds that don’t ever come near their debut album in terms of either boldness or pure quality.

Overall, despite daring decisions, Hyperdrama is ultimately a tedious and unappealing experience that never quite delivers.

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