Album Review : Better Lovers - Highly Irresponsible (2024)

One thing only time and maturity can grant you is the knowledge that death is not the end. By that, I mean that your favorite band might crash and burn, but it might just be the prelude to something greater, like when The Dillinger Escape Plan called it quits in 2017 or when Every Time I Die imploded in 2022. No one thought this could turn into anything good and yet two years later, Better Lovers have released their debut full length record Highly Irresponsible and this could be the beginning of something beautiful.

Highly Irresponsible features ten songs and thirty-five minutes of breakneck music ranging from old school metallic hardcore to Dillinger inspired mathcore possessed by the spirit of hardcore punk. It is unruly, slightly out of control and never ever boring. Seriously, this was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024 and it lived up to its monstrous hype. Highly Irresponsible is an electric discharge. A fresh input of controlled chaos shot right up your brain stem. I don’t know about you, but it's my definition of fun.

Are there bangers on this record? Fuck yeah, I have a hard time telling you what's NOT a banger, to be honest. A White Horse Covered in Blood was already one of my favorite songs of 2024. If you haven't heard it already, it's a powerful and frantic rock song driven by a simpler, more direct structure and a spirited performance by vocalist Greg Puciato. It makes great use of repetition, which is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s by far the most accessible song on Highly Irresponsible, but it's intoxicating.

I'm usually not a big lyrics guy, but A White Horse Covered in Blood hit the spot in that regard. It works on two levels: as a narrative about a police interrogation and as a man conversing with his own guilt. It's a really cool song to exteriorize yourself to. I may or may not have screamed the lyrics as hard as I can in stressful situations. Lie Between the Lines is another MONSTER hit. It's way heavier (almost comically heavy), but it has such a cool, Western-like intro and Earth-shattering grooves to fuck shit up to.

Lies Between the Lines is fucking muscular, but it never feels quite out of control. There was such a crazy attention to detail in writing and production, I pick up stuff every time I listen to it. I love the cool guitar bridge played by Jordan Buckley halfway trough that just brings extra texture and atmosphere to a bulldozing song. The song could entirely do without, but it's a very Dillinger thing to add extra details to songs that already work, like extra toppings on a pizza. You can never go wrong. It's always tasty as fuck.

The third soul-eviscerating song on Highly Irresponsible is, in my opinion, Superman Died Paralyzed. On top of having a killer title and uplifting lyrical themes, I think it’s the hardest song on the record. It’s speeding bullet of a hardcore punk number lead by a possessed Greg Puciato who seamlessly alternates between cleans and shrieks. I love the dramatic spoken word pre-choruses that once again craft such a strong identity for the song, which can only come from a mature and self-aware band.

So, that's just the out-of-this-world stuff. The rest is also amazing.

What else is good on that record? Everything Was Put Here For Me is a ferocious, sardonic hardcore punk piece with a ridiculously fun chorus and riffs that come together like pieces of a fragments of a cipher you've decoding as you go along and enhance the mean streak of the song. Your Misplaced Self follows a similar formula albeit it is more of an introspective and empowering song with themes of self-awareness and self-definition. It has also killer, breakneck dueling guitars from Jordan Buckley and Will Putney.

There's a strong hardcore punk side to Highly Irresponsible, but it's a multifaceted record. Future Myopia is more on the chaotic and unpredictable sides with abrupt changes of tempo and a schizophrenic drum performance from Ol' Goose Holyoak. Seriously, it's one of my favorite drumming performance of the year. Goose makes Future Myopia sound so fucking powerful. Shout out to Steve Micciche's fat bass bridge. It's so fucking loud. I'm sure that it makes the venue rumble when he plays it live.

The aforementioned are my favorite songs on Highly Irresponsible, but I suspect it's going to change with usage. It already started to. I didn't care for power ballad At All Times when it came out as a single and now I'm singing it at the top of my lungs whenever I listen to the record. Once again, not sure why Better Lovers thought it was a good idea to put it on such a record, but it's so out there that it fucking works. That bridge is bound to become a karaoke moment that no one understands but me.

I got nothing negative to say on Deliver Us From Life, Drowning in a Burning World or Love As An Act of Rebellion, but I don’t believe they had such strong identities compared to the other songs on Highly Irresponsible. I don’t skip them or anything. As a matter of fact, I believe this is one of the lengthiest album reviews I've ever written. Sometimes you don’t know how much you like something until you start picking it apart and force is to admit : I can’t shut the fuck up about how good this album is.

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Highly Irresponsible is brash and wild, but it’s also rich, mature and as fine-tuned as extreme music can get. I'm a big Will Putney guy and it might be one of his finest efforts yet. It's such a complete and deceptively detail oriented record, yet nothing feels forced. It's the sound of guys having fun playing with one another. Greg Puciato also made me care about the lyrics this time, party through his fiery and passionate delivery. I don't know about you, but it's the kind of music I enjoy.

It's much more Every Time I Die than it is The Dillinger Escape Plan, but it's a Better Lovers record more than anything else. I'm going to see them live with Full of Hell on November 16 and it can't come soon enough. Highly Irresponsible is definitely in the running for my album of the year. It might be a right place/right time/right person kind of deal, but it's the angry, but original, driven and mature music I needed to hear at this period of my life. I fucking love this record.

9.1/10

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