Spotted Horse by Texan trio Glassing is still one of my favourite discoveries from the Echoes and Dust mailbox. The album blew me away when I heard it towards the end of 2019 and it went high on my end of year list. Since then the band has continued to go from strength to strength and 2024 brings the release of fourth album From The Other Side Of The Mirror on the ever burgeoning Pelagic Records. This album isn’t a case of Glassing getting better, in my eyes they hit top form with Spotted Horse and have remained perfect. Where From The Other Side Of The Mirror betters those past Glassing efforts is by pushing everything to the extremes. There is more post-hardcore, more shoegaze, more black metal and everything sits in a perfectly executed balance to make a staggeringly brilliant album. Watch out end of year lists, a Texan freight train has just run through town.
There are times when rereading a draft of a review I feel I didn’t express my true emotion clearly enough, so I am just going to set it out right at the start. I absolutely love From The Other Side Of The Mirror, it has everything that I love about music these days. From the off ‘Anything You Want’, ‘Nothing Touches You’ and ‘Defacer’ absolutely rip yet also caress. Some of the vocal work in the first lingers into Holy Fawn shoegaze being played by a far heavier band. It’s this ridiculous mix of shoegaze and post-hardcore that can really hook, yet it’s not the only style on show. The beginning of ‘Defacer’ sounds like it’s going to be an all out black metal ice blast and it is quite staggering that’s only the first three tracks.
The base for everything is a dissonant blackened post-hardcore which can melt and bend into other genres, if it can’t fit the band play it faster until it does. ‘Nominal Will’ shows hints of post-black with rich positive guitar work whilst ‘Wake’ feels like peak post-black Deafheaven but a bit slower and the positive tones here really contrast with the bleakness in the openers. What is imperative to highlight is the astonishing work the three members of Glassing have accomplished here. The bass of Dustin Coffman is extraordinary enough, especially in places like ‘Circle Down’, never mind his added skills extracting such a great, demented and emotive vocal performance throughout. The drumming of Scott Osment really fills a huge amount of ground with speed, power and control (see ‘As My Heart Rots’) and this allows the guitar of Cory Brim to run an absolute riot with some startling passages. It is an outrageous unit which just keeps on producing the goods.
With ‘Swallow’ and ‘The Kestrel Goes’ the band does take a breather but it’s not even required for the listener. Whilst being utterly foreboding and grim in places there is always a positive aspect awaiting somewhere on the album. There are so many high points I could have just listed all of the 8 other tracks and said this will be at the very top of my end of year lists. Spotted Horse and Twin Dream were significantly good albums but From The Other Side Of The Mirror feels like something truly special.
