Static Dress expand and impress with Injury Episode

They nestle in the somewhat nebulous milieu of high octane alternative rock, be it screamo or post-hardcore or melodic something-or-other. It’s a subgenre that can often find itself between two bus stops, too bright and poppy for the pure metalheads, too shouty for the indie boys. It’s not psychedelic garage or post-punk – it’s not music that sounds good by default. It’s not easy to make this stuff sound good.

And to that end, Static Dress don’t make it look easy; indeed, their approach looks super effortful. They’re just two albums and a handful of EPs deep, but they’re in the world building business, supplementing their day jobs with interlinked videos, a comic book, various puzzles to crack by way of QR codes etc, and even a GameBoy game in 2024. The guitarist was masked and anonymous for a while, before deciding that, in the era of Sleep Token, that’s probably a bit cringe. They’re serious people with big ideas, is the long and short of it, and fortunately all of that coalesces into a sophomore release that, beyond sweeping concepts, sounds superb.

2022’s Rouge Carpet Disaster was a high quality debut, but Injury Episode ups the stakes in every way. Static Dress are aiming for something gigantic, but the project never spirals out of control. Early highlight “Adapter” is full of restraint and smart dynamics. The verses are kept tense and tight, the guitars needling away up high, drummer Sam Ogden beating out a militaristic pattern. The choruses explode in bittersweet fashion, kept achingly short until a key change and a final, soaring triumph.

“...Hospice” takes an even greater step forward, and outside of the genre constraints. It’s nothing short of a pop song, though blown upwards and outwards, played loud and distorted enough to retain a lot of bite. The stacked, swooping guitars that open the tune would make Kevin Shields proud. There could be one track or 100, bathing the listener in bright but brittle chords. The obvious comparison as it builds is Deftones, another act whose wide influences make them tough to pigeonhole. Olli Appleyard’s lyrics can tend towards the cryptic, but here the title speaks for itself and the chorus finds a sweet spot between vulnerable and guardedly poetic: “So take my dying hand / Find good in the goodbyes / For mourning won't come easily / Drag the fear from me.” This has crossover hit written all over it.

But by no means are Static Dress leaving behind the mosh pits and the aggression. There’s some pleasingly heavy stuff on here, too. “Malebomb” comes close to full blooded nu metal (a subgenre surely due a major revival in the near future) – but, like, really good nu metal. For all that the style is reviled, there’s no denying that downtuned, thumpy guitars and livewire all-angst vocals go together like baggy jeans and a backwards Yankees cap. It wouldn’t be a crime to stick a few DJ scratches over this one, if they fancied popping back into the studio for an afternoon.

Perhaps the coolest cut on the record is “Classic.Death.Pose”, an amelodic outlier that revs up the guttural rage for two minutes and change. Appleyard’s screams, the glugging bass, the clanging guitars all merge into one; the drums, the one source of lively energy, barely stay afloat above the din. Towards the end of the track, they suck what little light exists out of the mix, dropping into a half-speed, industrial chugfest. It’s 128 seconds of grind and it’s terrific.

Does all the extra curricular stuff, the mythologising and the conceptual storytelling really add up to a lot? Arguably, no. For the super fans of Static Dress, no doubt there could be an added element of connection, engaging with an act you love on, if not a deeper level, certainly a broader one. Other, more casual observers might find the whole thing a touch off-putting. Get too high on your own supply and you run the risk of going all Chris Gaines.

But it’s churlish, tediously so, to have a go at a band for caring too much. In an age of irony, it’s refreshing to see an act who have so clearly bet on themselves, who are aiming for the grandest stages available to them and, on the face of this evidence, have the material required to carry them there. When you’re releasing music as carefully crafted and polished as this, it doesn’t matter so much if your graphic novel isn’t up to snuff.