I Let It In and It Took Everything
The quiet music on I Let It In and It Took Everything can feel as disorienting as the heaviest passages. Loathe lets soft guitar tones blur at the edges, places voices at different distances and moves between sections without always offering a clear boundary. The album creates a sustained atmosphere even while its individual songs pull in sharply different directions.
Two-Way Mirror gives that atmosphere a strong melodic center. The guitars fill a wide space without obscuring the vocal, and the rhythm stays firm enough to prevent the song from drifting. Is It Really You? is even more direct in its emotional appeal. Its broad melody and carefully layered guitar sound make the chorus feel expansive, while the restraint in the performance leaves the feeling open rather than fully resolved.
The heavier material is just as important. Broken Vision Rhythm moves with a concentrated, abrasive force, and Gored builds its impact from low guitar weight and tightly controlled drums. Sean Radcliffe's playing gives those passages motion beyond the repeated attacks. The shifts in accent keep the music active even when the texture becomes extremely dense.
Loathe's achievement is making those two sides inhabit the same record. The brief 451 Days provides a useful connection, while New Faces In The Dark allows a softer opening to become something far more severe. The transitions create an emotional logic. A beautiful passage can suggest uncertainty, and an aggressive one can feel like a reaction to it.
The recognizable influence of Deftones is strongest in some of the clean vocal and guitar combinations. A few moments lean close enough to that vocabulary to make the resemblance distracting. Yet the harsher rhythms, electronic unease and overall sequence give the album a separate character. Its most distinctive quality is how insistently it keeps moving between attraction and discomfort.
The title track closes by drawing those tensions together instead of offering an easy release. I Let It In and It Took Everything rewards attention to its connections as much as its standout songs. The detail in the production supports a remarkably coherent mood, with enough strong melodic and rhythmic writing to make that mood more than a surface effect.
