II
While it’s hard to imagine a band as punishing as METZ refining their sound without losing their drive, they manage to do just that on *II*. It’s not that the music is any friendlier or that the songs are any more “evolved,” but that the band is that much more powerful and precise in their attack, making the turn-on-a-dime dynamics of “The Swimmer” and “Nervous System” seem graceful, even beautiful—that is, as beautiful as a minefield of feedback and yelling can be.
On II, the Toronto band Metz still draw most of their inspiration from turn-of-the-'90s post-hardcore and the Nirvana albums on either side of Nevermind, and they still believe three-and-a-half minutes is about as long as any song has the right to be.
The Toronto trio deliver a second album filled with turbo-fuelled levels of energy accompanied by buzz saw guitars, fuzzed up bass and steamroller drums, and a bracing knack for a killer hook.
When METZ kicked down post-hardcore's doors in 2012, they were touted in some quarters as a 'new Nirvana', but there's more to their second album than that.