Today Is the Day – No Good to Anyone (Review)

This is the eleventh album from US unconventional experimental metal band Today Is the Day.

I really, really enjoyed 2014’s Animal Mother, which was one of my favourite releases from this artist. As such, No Good to Anyone was much-anticipated, and had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, it’s one of Today Is the Day’s bests.

Today Is the Day have always revelled in their own self-created atypical sound, which scoops up grindcore, hardcore, sludge, and psychedelic metal into a big blender and manages to succeed in having it all congeal together into something greater than the sum of its parts. No Good to Anyone is the sound of these elements being channelled once more into a musical creation that defies easy categorisation and analysis. Suffice to say, this latest release is a force to be reckoned with, and the band’s signature non-standard sound has been refined even further on this new set of songs. From the scathingly harsh to the atmospherically haunting, the music on No Good to Anyone is compelling both in its forthright nature and also in its ability to promise even more when the time is taken to fully explore its secrets.

No two Today Is the Day albums are the same, and this newest one takes the sludge, psychedelic atmospheres, and moody, unfriendly soundscapes to the next level. The raw harshness that the band are capable of is present and correct, but the frequency of these outbursts has been scaled back, allowing the sludgier aspects to come to the fore. Characterising No Good to Anyone as an atmospheric sludge blues rock album peppered with moments of chaos and insanity is simply one of a myriad of ways that you could describe the splendours of this record.

Eclectic, punishing, emotive, ugly and beautiful, Hellish and angelic; a lot of different adjectives could be used to describe this work, and it’s credit to the band that it comes across as a holistic, well-delivered, well-crafted album, rather than a disjointed mess. Parts of the album are deeply introspective and hauntingly affecting, while others rage and tear and rip at the fabric of an uncaring world with all of their might. These songs paint vivid pictures and take the listener on a real journey. Across 50 minutes of strikingly individual music, Today Is the Day have released something truly special.

No Good to Anyone is an exceptional album, and some of Today Is the Day’s best work.