mvm.

The third album brings about familiarities in arena-sized rock, stabilising their festival fixture.

We’ve become all too familiar with the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and many a band stick with it till the cows come home. We’ve had many alternates veer off the worn path, with the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Cage The Elephant who promised batting for the big hard-rock leagues but trawled off to their artful depravations – but many others stick with the softening familiarity, comforting to both label and fans.

One of the bands within the rock scene are The Amazons. Now diving headfirst into their third studio album, How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me? it features neighbourly stadium-ready rockers that border the same line as their self-titled back in 2017.

A more poignant tale of a record being produced in the midst of lockdown – which more and more bands are seeing fit to do – it embraces a dark time for frontman Matthew Thomson away from his partner during the pandemic. How Will I Know?, There’s A Light and Northern Star all lead around finding hope, a flickering spark in the dark vastness of nothingness, that was evidently, the pandemic (I believe there’s a light at the end of the dark/I believe there’s a light in spite of it all.) A fairly rudimentary concept in the grand scheme of things, but holds up as quite effective song-writing, as it sets a relaxing pace with fiery singalongs drenched in post-pandemic optimism compared to the darker undertones of Future Dust‘s Fuzzy Tree and Doubt It in 2019.

Bloodrush was the first taste of The Amazons after the successive second, Future Dust and follows the same distinct pattern as those before it: a soaring chorus accomplished with its catchiness that would fit resolutely for their stadium sounds they’ve become accustomed to. Aforementioned How Will I Know and There’s A Light were the hopeful follow-ups and fit the bill, projecting a strong thesis on a fairly well-rounded album.

How will I know if Heaven will find me?
Everything I’ve lost
And all that I might be
There’s a change in the way we talk
Ain’t it strange, we don’t care no more? Oh

A channelling of Incubus acoustics are met in favourite One by One before the blunt trauma of Queens of the Stone Age aesthetic hits us, almost as a precursor to their blaring stand-out Ready For Something. Ready For Something is a trail-blazer of all bite and all bark, meriting a status of worthy gig and festival slots next year, harking back to the In My Mind and Stay With Me we saw go down well when they first started out.

While it is a relaxing precedent to find yourself in when a band sticks with a formula it knows and knows well, you can’t but wondering what rabbit holes they may fall down if they enter the sounds-and-scenes territory of a more experimental headspace.

Don’t get it twisted – the album still holds weight to a rather euphoric album that is ultimately an easy listen to be had, but its whether you were to play it safe or go the full mile and dive into Black Midi or something.