The Fall Of Troy

First things first: The Fall Of Troy’s previous album ‘Doppelgänger’ was the final word on blistering, maths-infused hardcore. A Rococo nightmare of jammering guitar and Pythagorean song structure, it’s the best album you’ve never heard. So it pains us greatly to say that, having set the bar so high in the first place, TFOT are unable to top themselves on ‘Manipulator’. They often come close, as on the psychotic baroquecore of ‘Semi-Fiction’; and Thomas Erak is still tapping into the same divine force that powers his fretwork into the realms of the finger-twisting impossible, but his previous mastery of innovative song-structure has deserted him, leaving a once maddeningly intricate band simply maddening. Guys, we realise you’re only competing with your own genius, but this is just disappointing.

Mike Sterry