[Click play above to stream Caustic Casanova’s Glass Enclosed Nerve Center. Album is out Friday, Oct. 7, on Magnetic Eye Records and can be preordered here.]

It does not matter what genre label you want to put on Caustic Casanova‘s fifth album, Glass Enclosed Nerve Center. There is no box, no simple explanation from which it will not wiggle loose. What is hands-down one of the best offerings of 2022 in the stylistic umbrella that is heavy rock, it is a definitive manifestation of who the band have always been and who their potential has meant they could be. From professing love amid pedal steel and a newfound affection for synth that will continue to serve them well in “Anubis Rex,” happenstance-skewering like it’s no big deal both sides of maybe the stupidest debate in recorded human history — ‘iz medicin halp?’ — in the single lyric, “But with perfect ideology it’s impossible to spread disease,” of “A Bailar Con Cuarentena,” to narrating totalitarian anxieties via Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party in “Bull Moose Against the Sky,” Glass Enclosed Nerve Center is likewise intricately composed and untethered feeling, the band — bassist/vocalist Francis Beringer, drummer/vocalist Stefanie Zænker, guitarist Andrew Yonki and, involved for the first time in the writing, second guitarist Jake Kimberley — mining creative triumph from the raw ore of human decline.

Instrumentally, lyrically and in their performance as captured here by returning producer J. Robbins (and returning mixer Andrew Schneider; it’s a winning team), with whom the band have worked for over a decade, Caustic Casanova are a blast. “Anubis Rex” begins with a sunrise of guitar, and from there the momentum is quickly established across the three shorter opening tracks — “Anubis Rex” (posted here), “Lodestar” (video posted here) and “A Bailar Con Cuarentena” (video posted here) — as the band twist from one part to the next in an establish-the-riff-then-start-the-vocals manner that speaks to their underlying foundation in post-hardcore.

Each of these three pieces, all of which are under five minutes long, offers something else, whether it’s the bass punch of “Lodestar,” the hungover, grown-up emo of “Anubis Rex” or the encapsulation of our era, percussive playfulness and restless freneticism of “A Bailar Con Cuarentena,” but they are united in perspective, in their thoughtful execution, lyrics that are smart, funny, an obvious focal point and worth committing to memory, and in their ability as players to launch into another level of heft even from was on offer in 2019’s God How I Envy the Deaf (review here). “Anubis Rex” is more about movement than weight, relatively speaking, but with its mathy beginning “Lodestar” both makes and delivers on the threat, with Caustic Casanova harnessing a sound like the band one wishes Mastodon had become, able to dizzy with complex, progressively styled changes while remaining accessible via the overarching melody and, in this case, a hook.

“A Bailar Con Cuarentena” is a highlight that builds off elements put forth in the first two tracks — thus a logical third — and lives up to having the word ‘dance’ in its title while still managing a linear narrative that moves from sipping mental champagne with shut-in multitudes to finding out why the rattlesnake’s teeth are so white. It also serves as a lead-in for the 9:40 “Shrouded Coconut,” a marked shift in approach that pulls away from the immediacy of the first three tracks in favor of a long instrumental stretch before its first verse, playing back and forth between riffs and leads over a swinging beat, spacious keys, etc., for the better part of its initial four minutes — longer than “Lodestar,” which is 3:41, for example — before Beringer and Zænker begin singing. The change can be jarring if you don’t know it’s coming, but “Shrouded Coconut” offers depth for repeat listeners in its plotted movement and increase in intensity later as they cut the tempo and shift into a feedback-laced lumber the likes of which would bring a tear to Floor‘s collective eye, ending in a solid minute of noise that feels well earned as a cap to side A.

By this time, Glass Enclosed Nerve Center has set itself up for what follows on the 22-minute “Bull Moose Against the Sky,” a genuine epic tale complete with multiple characters between Theodore Roosevelt, his wife Edith, attempted-assassin John Flammang Schrank, Jane Addams, William Howard Taft (played by Robbins) and a Greek-style chorus. The lyrics are set up as a kind of morality play, with lines and verses given to characters beginning with Beringer a capella soon joined by Zænker as they describe a fever dream of the Dakotas. This beginning, after all the noise at the end of “Shrouded Coconut,” is stark and the snare and guitar work that follows is heavy Americana wrought in such a way as to emphasize both the theatrics — all that’s missing in that start is a fife, and I’m not sure a fife would actually work there; there’s just about no way it wasn’t considered — but within the first five minutes, they’ve built on the heft in “Lodestar” and “Shrouded Coconut,” drawn themselves out through winding crunch accordingly, and begun the tale of Roosevelt deciding to run for President a third time, being shot, losing and ultimately dying.

I’ll just say it and get it out of the way: It’s the best song I’ve heard this year, as both a story/conceptual work and just as a righteous summary of the band. From the pride-swell vocals at the start to the sneaky entry after seven minutes in of the “Thriller”-style keyboards soon to swell to prominence as Edith declares/warns, “He’s a magnet/A comet/With molten and volcanic core,” to the thrust backing Robbins-as-Taft’s resolve, “I have a part to play/I’ll play it,” and the turns past the 10-minute mark between the chorus and the increasing frenzy of Roosevelt’s mindset — mirrored in the music, naturally — that give way to a post-black metal mini-stretch of blastbeats and reverb-soaked vocals from Zænker, because why not, and a bright-sounding momentary up-for-air that results in a highlight guitar solo, mapped out and no less considered than any of the words to any of these songs, before a standout verse of looming storm begins the apex movement of the piece. Yes, there is more blasting as Beringer-as-Roosevelt berates with outdated namecalling, “Weasel worders, mollycoddlers, kittle cattle, tame/The black blood crusts around the mouths of those you have betrayed,” and it comes after a sweeping and progressive noise rock tumult from which they sprint driven by suitable tremolo and, at 18:25, a resounding thud that is the signal of entry into the song’s still-heavy comedown.

Like all that feedback at the end of “Shrouded Coconut,” the denouement in “Bull Moose Against the Sky” is purposeful and makes a fitting conclusion. Roosevelt swaggers, “It’ll take more than a bullet to kill a bull moose like me,” but the keyboard has already started the dirge that the whole band will soon take up, the guitars seeming to claw for more life even as the final lines are recited in callback to earlier verses, leaving no loose ends instrumental or otherwise. So it is that Glass Enclosed Nerve Center finishes with a distant echo of guitar playing the melodic answer to “Face is marred by sweat [blood] and dust/Fails again and again and just gets up.” Silence weighs heavy when it is finished, underscoring the power of the song to make its audience feel something for this character who, in addition to sport-killing in colonialist fervor throughout his life, was a megalomaniac who sabotaged his own political party in unhinged bridge-burning zealotry. Nobody remembers that part. Everybody remembers the face on Mt. Rushmore.

And while “Bull Moose Against the Sky” is a career achievement in its own right, it is not at all the sum total of accomplishments on Glass Enclosed Nerve Center. Each of these five tracks adds something to the whole, is crucial in craft and engaging regardless of the approach one wants to take in hearing it. Touring veterans at more nearly 15 years’ remove from their 2008 debut, Imminent Eminence, Caustic Casanova are a refreshing answer to the cynicism of both “rock is dead” and “there’s too much out there and it all sounds the same.” They are between punk, metal, prog, noise and heavy rock(s) in such a way as to be on a wavelength of their own, and while that’s been the case for some time, never before have they come across as so utterly in command of their style and songwriting. They have pushed and pushed and pushed themselves creatively ever forward in an individual approach, and this is one of the best albums of 2022 with longer, enduring resonance anticipated. Some records you just know you’re going to live with. Recommended.

Caustic Casanova, “A Bailar Con Cuarentena” official video

Caustic Casanova, “Lodestar” official video

Caustic Casanova, Glass Enclosed Nerve Center (2022)

Caustic Casanova website

Caustic Casanova on Facebook

Caustic Casanova on Instagram

Caustic Casanova on Bandcamp

Magnetic Eye Records on Bandcamp

Magnetic Eye Records website

Magnetic Eye Records on Facebook

Tags: Caustic Casanova, Caustic Casanova Glass Enclosed Nerve Center, Frederick, Glass Enclosed Nerve Center, Magnetic Eye Records, Maryland, Washington D.C.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 at 8:49 am and is filed under audiObelisk, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.