Pulse

METZ build "Pulse" around an almost physical assault — the guitars aren't layered so much as stacked, dense slabs of distortion that press against the eardrums with the insistence of something structural, load-bearing. The drumming is ferocious in the Canadian noise-rock tradition but also rhythmically precise, never dissolving into pure chaos; the brutality is purposeful. Alex Edkins's vocals tear through the mix like something that's been held down too long, raw and hoarse, delivering lines that feel like body memory rather than thought. The emotional register is almost preverbal — this is music that communicates through the nervous system before the mind has time to process meaning. There's a bass frequency at the song's core that you feel in the chest more than you hear with the ears. Lyrically it reaches toward something ineffable about compulsion and repetition — the body's insistence on certain rhythms even when the mind wants stillness. "Pulse" belongs to the lineage of Shellac and early Jesus Lizard, but METZ bring a rawness that's distinctly their own. You play this when something needs to be expelled rather than expressed — on a run, in a car with the windows down, or in any moment when the body's energy has outrun the available vocabulary.