Battles Mirrored
With a collective history in bands like Don Caballero, Helmet, and Lynx, the members of […]
With a collective history in bands like Don Caballero, Helmet, and Lynx, the members of Battles have ample experience navigating the angular, often repetitive cadences that identify quality, nearly unclassifiable rock music. On Mirrored, their first full-length LP for Warp, the quartet manages to further frustrate the categorically obsessed, crafting an otherworldly amalgam of strident math rock and digital experimentalism. The epic “Tonto”-perhaps the album’s most immaculate moment-shows the foursome in perfect lockstep, anchored by John Stanier’s precision drumming and Ian Williams’ melodic guitar loops. It, like the remainder of Mirrored, represents accessible-yet-challenging music in its most admirable form-smart, interesting, always unexpected, and occasionally divisive.