Album Review: Crawler by Idles

It's hard to have a conversation about British rock music without Idles' name coming up these days. 2018's exhilarating Joy As An Act of Resistance propelled the Bristol five-piece from relative obscurity to Mercury Prize nominees heralded by many as saviours of UK punk. Their follow-up, 2020's Ultra Mono, reached Number 1 in the charts but lacked the sparkle of its predecessor, its in-your-face lyrical mantras edging towards the heavy-handed.

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The phenomenon that continues to grow from strength to strength. It might have taken the best part of a decade for IDLES to make any kind of headway outside of their native Bristol, yet since 2017's debut Brutalism provided an unsuspecting and unrelenting platform into the wider world, it's probably fair to say they haven't looked back. 2018's Joy as an Act of Resistance solidified their status as arguably the most exciting British rock band to emerge this past decade.

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CRAWLER certainly offers that needed change, even from its first moments. Fans have come to expect tremendous gut-punches from IDLES openers, but "MTT 420 RR" abandons the band's roaring rock machine for a textured, quietly buzzing introduction. It's dark and dense, dissecting a car crash in gruesome detail. The same motif reappears for "Car Crash," this time framed amidst an abrasive industrial maelstrom and rapped verses, courtesy of Talbot.

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Whether you considered Idles' 2020 album Ultra Mono to be a voice of righteous rage and reason in the age of Trump and Brexit, or just more haughty, hectored hashtag activism for people who smugly share Occupy Democrats memes on Facebook, there's one thing we can all agree on: Its album cover was perfect. The image of some poor bloke getting smushed by a hot-pink blob was both an accurate depiction of this band's blunt posi-punk force and a fitting metaphor for lyrics that are often so on-the-nose, they're liable to crush your face. After all, this is a band whose lead singer doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve--he tattooed it into one.

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The boisterous and aggressive Bristol punks IDLES are back with their raucous fourth record - 'Crawler'. Serving as a post-pandemic follow-up to their 2020 record 'Ultra Mono', 'Crawler's ambitious experimentation and stylistic choices make it their best work yet. After frontman Joe Talbot suffered a near-death experience with a motorcyclist speeding past his car leaving mere inches of space, the fragility of life and death was so blatantly on display.

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