Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
8-2-2026
Ist Ist - Dagger
Every day, we are immersed in investigations, whether we are aware of it or not, and as a result, we often find ourselves without concrete results. Music provides us with some relief from the tension and melancholy caused by not knowing. But we have to deal with the question that haunts us, that gives us doubts and even the most dangerous of all: the one that stabs us, directly or indirectly, that feeds on our pain, consecrating its immunity, which is nothing more than the best result achievable.
The apotheosis is reached by the four Mancunian pirates who, now on their fifth album, break the mould, pulverise their own glorious past and throw songs at us like freshly mined diamonds, unpolished, natural, treacherous, majestic, wicked. However, they could not do without this incredible combination of skill, experience and invulnerability in the progression that their DNA preserves. Dagger is an eloquent mystery, exposing our controversial petals to the fluorescent brilliance of ten corals which, emerging from the waves, glide over our brains.
Physical, mental, contemplative, exploratory, stuck in a constant interplay of light and shadow, this work magnetises skills, makes them motivating, whispers lethal paths, where there is no waste of time but rather a space to cultivate. And here are the seeds, the wait devoted to contemplation and understanding, through songs like needle pricks, until they change shape, becoming a nocturnal exploration without pause. Ist Ist rush forward with the athletic frenzy of those who are aware that these last twelve years spent together are continuous springboards, where research is already essence. However, as honest men, they do not give up on study, and the songs are not games or pastimes but rather identities to be built, modified, and directed towards the most majestic meaning: to please and be useful to those who have tattooed their essence on their souls.
It disrupts the sequence, the depth of a concrete ability not to deactivate the artistic path of previous times, but above all the courage to pay attention to dynamics, production, and musical inserts not as technicalities but as arrangements that are now obsolete in the field of composition. The song form thus emerges strengthened, regaining colour and meaning. They are not afraid of melodies that stick in the mind, almost always pairing them with rhythm, with dance that moves us towards their vault, which, though impenetrable, manages to grant us access and habitability in their breaths.
Dagger projects, offers, steals sighs and induces deep reflection: their steps are deeper, they have defeated the comparisons that only fools made, and they find themselves light, with their original traits, owing nothing to anyone, revealing without a doubt that, if listened to with deep understanding, one can glimpse the breadth and depth of skill that make the past nothing more than a stupid defensive barrier. The four go further, they are something else, they are the gaze of the present, the instinct of musical killers with songs that are shocking in their craftsmanship and resilience. They continue through the alleys of Manchester, knowing in advance that these songs have no place to start from, but magnetic waves to ride and shift boundaries.
Concrete, wind, salt, dust, woods, construction sites, mines, caves, swamps, deserts, electrical cables: this is only part of their creation, of a world they have built with hard work and above all pride, finally determining a multi-purpose blade, to be used as a support or as a lethal weapon. It is listening that will decide, relegating an enormous and constructive responsibility. Without any difficulty, the Old Scribe affirms that Dagger is the passport, the journey, the light, the highest and most concrete point of their entire career, an engraving that does not deform or hurt but teaches, educates, creating through love a sense of bliss that leads to solitary joy as well as mass joy.
They grew up through concerts, spending time visiting a world that slowly became wider and wider, expanding their cognitive horizons and translating everything into music as a laboratory, from selection to absorption, translation and mutation, because, in truth, the four of them are capable of maturing artistic molecules and at the same time speeding up creative acts.
Knowing how to express the adherence of one's instincts to a higher, conceptual vision demonstrates how this is a sharp album, a block of concrete on which (most likely) flowers and silk will be placed in the future. Now, right now, with these blades, these cracks suited to emotion, Ist Ist outline the future with a fog suited to thoughtfulness, to slowing down bravado and becoming wiser. You can feel the experience of hours in the recording studio, as well as on stage, or even walking the streets of their journey, the maturation of Adam's singing (skilled at compacting his old clichés and creating new opportunities for his ever-perfidious and celestial tone), Andy's bass as a blanket and not just a shock, Joel's drumming as a strategic force that injects confidence into the veins and adds melody, and Mat's work on guitars and synths as an alchemist who sees the future and draws it with skill and great agility.
The lyrics deserve our scrutiny, the time to interact with Adam's profound versatility, which throughout the album is capable of creating bridges, visions, killer choruses, exploratory verses in the stanzas, of insisting perfectly with words like stones, of hiding the right to one's own intimacy with reasoning that is often seemingly simple but uncomfortable, for absolute truths that make reading and containing them within ourselves complex. Even when adding rainbows, they are signals that fade into grey, into the unconscious that knows no suitable light, demonstrating once again his estrangement from banality.
The music becomes multifaceted, beyond the fast/slow rhythm, there are evident insertions of sounds that solidify the form, the expressive mode, here more evident and compact. The musical genres are connected with wisdom, without forcing, with an inclination towards agglomeration that makes everything fluid. There is no shortage of post-punk whips and an almost synth-pop sound to make everything more accessible than in the past, but there are several new features. The interplay between keyboards and rhythm guitars is epic, with rhythm changes and choruses filled with sparkling crystals. They highlight, I would say finally, the need for catchy thrills, for not hiding a modern propensity and ancient essentiality, to set the whole thing towards the mystery of songs that live on a chaos that is not boiling but dense, to explore hypotheses of harmony with the sun never experienced in Manchester. If Architecture presented them to us as phenomena of condensation of the known, with enormous peaks, here we have an almost new formation, certainly matured and different, with an absolute inclination towards lightness, without depriving it of density...
But it is not a happy album, nor can it be: Adam himself recognises the violence and heaviness of the world, the only joy seems to be the possibility of writing songs, of creating a screen that becomes a mirror, where one can take refuge to grasp illusions, which nowadays remains an act of courage....
We find ourselves completely enveloped by intense, full, deep harmonies, the result of a perfect amalgam, which comes from a combination of intellectuality that cannot dominate without an instinct that continues to wander through the grooves, generating ecstasy and tears that are more visionary than visible, anticipating the direction of our understanding. The psychophysical tension remains constant: the prelude to a twilight that encompasses spirituality and a pleasant murderous portent...
Song by Song
1 - I Am The Fear
The temple of revelation shows us an insurrection, a musical novelty structured in a danceable, powerful track, with electronic ranges that allow moments of suspension before shining with momentum, with heavier guitars and a synth scale irrigating the veins of a fear that here becomes a person, in the track that most shows the Sheffield side of the four's entire career. A seductive and robust hypnotic hammer to open one's body...
2 - Makes No Difference
After the initial seconds reminiscent of the leaden atmosphere of Rust by Man Of Moon, Ist Ist return to the harmonic and visual crossovers of their penultimate work Light A Bigger Fire, with the ability, through an energetic flow of synth and bass-drum combo, to raise the harmony and power towards the territory of a sky that can thus absorb the immense magical touches of a chorus that smells of soft drugs, giving a controllable euphoria...
3 - Warning Signs
This song encapsulates the entire career of the four Mancunians: their ability to translate and convey their DNA in the compelling temporal adherence to genres that reveal themselves but with respect, sparing the poor side to generate a fast, ferocious lava flow, in a rhythm that presses on like words, a continuous warning that highlights how presence and absence are often the same enemy... It is post-punk that is disinfected by an almost masked synth pop. Andy and Mat's play of emotional swings allows Joel to chase everything away with rhythmic precision, while Adam governs the breath and tone with a familiar but here almost romantic vocal register...
4 - Burning
And it is amazement: the opening seconds of the song take us back to the 1970s, with perfect melodic force and anger, and then give us obsessive textures, lyrics that are a fire doll, another wound that tears through our security, making our minds subject to perfect obedience to listening. A song for open spaces, majestic, made of the same stuff as U2's Bullet The Blue Sky: skilfully able to fill the sky with our emotions...
5 - The Echo
The melodic spark, the celebration of a loop that dispels fears, offering emotions and joy, masterfully intertwined with tension. It will become the ideal moment to turn the band's fans into a redundant choir that will end up climbing onto the stage. The rhythm guitar is tar, the bass is comforting thunder, the keyboard is an electronic toy that permeates the whole perfectly, and the drumming is a concert of muscles in sublime agitation...
6 - Encouragement
Cinema, Tangerine Dream, anticipation, slow development, the dominance of creativity, the navel of this entire album find in this song the guide to understanding the miracle we are listening to. Sudden changes, moods, a pop side seeking space, a dark side that remains like a scar, Andy's bass sweeping away fear and Joel turning his instrument into a treble clef with claws, and then we arrive at the chorus, long, obsessively disruptive and fascinating...
7 - I Remember Everything
The most solemn moment, between light and clouds bidding farewell, in an atmosphere that relaxes the muscles but not the emotions, with a chorus that brings tears to the eyes, with a truly compelling interplay of melodic winds leading up to a guitar solo that lifts our gaze...
8 - Obligations
Mystery in the lyrics, musical continuity, without smudges, for a song that manifests their mental movement, the great voracity to create power and light, with a melancholic flavour that makes the mood the right embrace for this stage that seems to be the compression of their last two works.
9 - Song For Someone
The slow atmospheres of Architecture return, night-time alleys like a beer drunk in the middle of the streets, the synth reproducing the angelic sound of the stars and Adam's voice like a heavy and enchanting whisper...
10 - Ambition
Despair can become a lullaby, an enchanting refuge that reveals how the mind is an infinite, immeasurable hole, and Adam's words are the springboard for a musical structure that becomes a cloak while everything seems abandoned, with an embrace that starts with The Art Of Lying and ends with this last spark, making the band's obvious writing skills emblematic, which concludes with a song that brings things back to where they started: total and devoted adoration for their immense qualities...
