''Strange Peace'' is the third studio album by Canadian

noise rock Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise music, noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimal music, minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, a ...

three-piece band

METZ Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand E ...

. It was released on September 22, 2017 through

Sub Pop Records Sub is a common abbreviation of words beginning with the prefix "sub-". Sub or SUB may also refer to Places * Juanda International Airport, Surabaya, Indonesia, IATA code SUB Computing and technology * , an HTML tag for subscript * SUB designat ...

. Live-to-tape recording sessions took place at

Electrical Audio Electrical Audio is a recording studio, recording facility founded in Chicago, Illinois by musician and recording engineer Steve Albini in 1997. Hundreds of independent music projects have been recorded there. Unlike most producers, Albini refuses ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

with

Steve Albini Steve Albini (pronounced ; born July 22, 1962) is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal en ...

, at the Woodshed in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

and at Baskitball 4 Life with

Graham Walsh Holy Fuck is a Canadian electronica band from Toronto. They were a part of Dependent Music, a music label and artist collective that began in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 2004 until its closing. They were then a part of the Young Turks label and in ...

, and at the Nursery with member Alex Edkins. Production was handled by METZ.

Promotion and release

On July 11, 2017, the album was previewed with the release of the song "Cellophane" via

streaming Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

, along the way revealing the title of the album, its release date, track list, cover artwork and supporting tour. It was also revealed that the band have worked with

, who provided live-to-tape recording of ''Strange Peace'' during four days at his Chicago-based studio

, which was booked for a week by the trio. On August 2, 2017, the group shared the second song from the album, "Drained Lake", for which an acompaying

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

was released later in October 2017. The third promotional single from the album, "Mess of Wires", was released on August 22, 2017 also via streaming. The fourth and final promotional single, "Common Trash" was released in CDr format along with the album on September 22, 2017. Celebrating 30 years of

Sub Pop Sub Pop is a record label founded in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop achieved fame in the early 1990s for signing Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, central players in the grunge movement. They are often ...

, the song "Escalator Teeth" b/w "On and On" was released as a part of 'SPF30 Singles Spectacular' series on September 27, 2018.

Critical reception

''Strange Peace'' was met with generally favorable reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 78 based on nineteen reviews. The aggregator

AnyDecentMusic? AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates album reviews from magazines, websites, and newspapers. Primarily focused on popular music – covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots, hip-hop, R&B, and rap – albums are adjudg ...

has the critical consensus of the album at a 7.4 out of 10, based on twenty reviews.

Track listing

Personnel

*Alex Edkins –

lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, a ...

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

producer Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

, recording, mixing, art direction *Chris Slorach –

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

, songwriter, producer, mixing, art direction *Hayden Menzies –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, songwriter, producer, mixing, art direction *

– recording, mixing *

– recording *Jeff Kleinsmith – art direction, design *Anna Edwards – live photography *Jonathan Bauerle – illustration

Charts

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2017 albums Metz (band) albums Sub Pop albums