Artwork by Orion Landau. Perhaps it’s a sign of Yob’s ascendency that they now have artwork from metal’s equivalent of a  laureate.

Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Ablaze, the opening track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.

A couple of things stood out from the initial press release for Yob’s eighth album. Firstly, the title: Our Raw Heart – very emo. Will Pete Wentz be featuring? Secondly, seven tracks? That’s, like, two normal Yob albums. Their first – Elaborations of Carbon – had six, and their six albums since have featured five tracks or fewer, which may not sound like much, but when the average song length is 12 minutes, that’s a big chunk. All in all, it sounds like Yob had a lot to get off their chest. Mike Scheidt’s travails have been fairly well publicised, but as a reminder, he had a severe attack of acute diverticulitis in 2017, which a) sounds really fucking painful b) nearly killed him. Initially, after Clearing the Path to Ascend, I assumed Yob would continue to plough that more melodic furrow, but after this news I wondered if such an experience would push Scheidt the other way, in a terrible, inspirational manner, into utterly br00tal territory.

Instead, Yob have continued to mine the melodic vein of CTPTA; Ablaze comes straight in with an intro that staggers between melancholy and unbearable weight, with that stabbing rhythm unique to Yob and weird opening chords with lots of open strings. It sounds expansive in the same way that shoegaze does. As was the case on CTPTA, Scheidt’s clean singing has gone from strength to strength, having developed a bit of a quaver to his voice. It’s been cool to hear his voice get stronger over the last few albums, and when his roared vocals combine with clean guitar it makes for an interesting mix. The lyrics have a similarly abstract quality to those of Neurosis, but where they differ is where Neurosis tend to look down, at stones, uncovered bones, rivers of blood, etc., Yob tend to look up:

Root
Unknown by time
Within
This ache of beyond
Wings in oceans vast
Swells in azure skies

A lead single this is not – the verses are long and – one thing that’s not changed – it repeats a lot. By the time of the clean break at 7.00, Our Raw Heart is already shaping up to be an epic listen, whereas previous albums tended to take a little longer to grow into themselves. This break actually reminded me of Scheidt’s more delicate solo material on Stay Awake, which, again, was not – as good as it was – lead single stuff.

With that just said, the rhythm section is perfunctory yet thunderous, and sounds massive. The melodic nature remains throughout without the track ever losing its heft. Produced by both Yob and Billy Barnett at Gung Ho Studios in Eugene, Oregon, and mastered by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering in New York, the break from Dogwood Studios from CTPTA onwards seems to have marked a bit of a change in Yob’s oeuvre.

Next track: The Screen.