EBM

Album review

Editors seemed to have found a renewed sense of creativity with 2019's The Blanck Mass Sessions, their electronic companion collaboration to 2018's Violence with producer/instrumentalist Benjamin John Power (aka Blanck Mass). It was a feeling of starting anew that the British group underlined by bringing Power on board as full-time bandmember for their seventh studio album, 2022's EBM. An acronym for "Editors Blanck Mass," EBM should appeal to both longtime fans of the group's epic post-punk sound and anyone who perked up with the robust electronic dynamism that marked Blanck Mass Sessions. Without losing any of their distinctive, cinematically austere style, Editors have embraced a clubby, dare you say, fun exuberance. These are tsunami-level productions marked by shimmering waves of synthy distortion, doomy bass grooves, and as always, singer Tom Smith's Teutonic baritone croon. Some cuts, like the hooky "Karma Climb" and "Strawberry Lemonade," have that twangy guitar and whip-cracking Krautrock beat of classic Depeche Mode. Others, like the opening "Heart Attack," are surprisingly cheeky, sounding something like a '90s rave DJ'd by a Mario Brothers video game. Much of this leads to the mid-album "Silence," a Homeric ballad in which Smith soars through the cosmos on a delicate rainbow of synth and chimes before crashing to the earth in a meteor shower of over-driven electric guitar squelch and digital distortion. It's a bold, deeply emotive moment, evoking the heartfelt style of Peter Gabriel. That these tracks, as with all of EBM, feel both familiar and unexpectedly fresh speaks to the alchemical spark between Editors and Power.
© Matt Collar /TiVo