SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: WIND WALKERS – I DON’T BELONG HERE

WIND WALKERS
I DON’T BELONG HERE
FEARLESS RECORDS

When Wind Walkers released What If I Break? in 2023, it was a record coated with originality. A sonically mutated, volatile experience that conquered an impressive balance of post hardcore grit, infectious glitchy electronic elements, and melodic swagger. What If I Break? was more than a successful mastery of genre fusion, but an album that found a way to showcase all these elements to tell a deeper story about the fractured and often vulnerable psyche of human existence. Now, with their new EP, I Don’t Belong Here, Wind Walkers continues to test the waters of metal experimentation and makes a bold and impassioned pivot with a small offering that still maintains their chaotic yet strangely cohesive sound yet has channeled more of their pop and R&B influences, beautifully merging this and more into six tracks.

From the opening dulcet vocals and sultry electronic vibes that soak into one’s ears on “Hereditary,” and “The End Aesthetic,” the tracks are a velvety slow burn that eases itself into its more agitated spaces, flowing effortlessly between the two musical auras, creating a listening experience that is equal parts jagged glass piercing through the skin just enough to feel the pain of the prick, the other gently pulling back to let one feel the essence of that pain in small, controlled doses until it eventually passes. This sonic gut-punch is something that continues to coat the EP, with more intimate and raw moments like “Sink Into Me” and “Funeral Balloons,” where style and substance intertwine together to manifest something that is vulnerable, aggressive, and melodically cinematic.

“Eating My Heart Out” and “Silk and Static” continue this thematic battle of seeking connection, the inevitable ending of things, try as we might to stop it from happening, while deep down blaming themselves for why this connection is not being reciprocated. Embodying this kind of poetic tension between introspection and vitriolic self-loathing. Offering softer, more vulnerable points of emotional honesty towards the end of the EP, it is here that Wind Walkers are the most in tune with their use of melody and lyricism.

I Don’t Belong Here is a strong EP that shows that Wind Walkers have gotten much stronger at lyricism and finding that balance of evocatively showing this in their songwriting and by utilizing different genres and elements to keep it uniform and grounded. There isn’t a bad song on this EP, and it is only a positive sign of better things to come from the band.

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