Album Of The Week: Cult Of Youth Final Days

Cult Of Youth fucked up when they released Love Will Prevail while it was still warm outside. The Brooklyn outfit dropped their sophomore album in early September 2012, and I have a vivid memory of attempting to process its grand, dark, propulsive songs while walking my dog through beautifully hazy late-summer heat. This was the wrong context for Love Will Prevail, a heady and ritualistic punk album that seemed beamed in from some older, more brutal civilization. Now: Love Will Prevail does not need things like complementary weather to be a great album. It simply is a great album. But context matters. You know this if you've ever grilled out to slow-crawling Southern rap or braved packed stores full of Christmas shoppers while blasting misanthropic-howl black metal through your earbuds. (I highly recommend both of these activities.) So I'm happy to report that Cult Of Youth have figured certain things out. With their new Final Days, they've released a bleak and feral and heavy album about the world spinning apart, and they've done it at the exact moment when it starts to get dark before you get off work, thus fucking up your mood for a good month or so. (I could be projecting here.) And more importantly, they've become a better band since the last time they made an album. That matters, too.