Review: Manchester Orchestra’s The Million Masks of God Feels Like a Sluggish Retread

The band’s sixth album is less of a revelation than a routine.

Manchester Orchestra, A Million Masks of God
Photo: Shervin Lainez

In February, Manchester Orchestra took to a small, darkened studio for a free, live-streamed performance of their 2017 album A Black Mile to the Surface. In between renditions of the album’s dusty, downtrodden songs—tightly honed over nearly four years of touring—colorful animated interludes appeared on screen, warping and transforming to the group’s jarring, jittery beats. These interludes represented an electronic element unlike anything the Atlanta-based band had done before, and after an incendiary version of A Black Mile to the Surface’s closing track, “The Silence,” the graphics and effects returned to announce the band’s follow-up, The Million Masks of God.

The two albums feel more closely tied together than any of Manchester Orchestra’s previous efforts, which found the band perpetually searching for a new identity, often with thrilling results. Their first three albums were restless and eclectic, but the live stream’s glitchy, abrasive interludes were a bit of a fake-out, as the band spends most of The Million Masks of God reprising the sweeping indie-rock sound of A Black Mile to the Surface.

As a result, the new album feels like less of a natural evolution and more like a retread. The opening track, “Inaudible,” kicks off on pretty much the same note as its predecessor’s “The Maze,” a sweet and sentimental midtempo rock song with a subtle folk aesthetic. As on that track, “Inaudible” places singer Andy Hull at the center of an echo-laden swell, but the melody verges on the saccharine, accompanied by soft piano flourishes and distant synthesizers.

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When the band dabbles in more disruptive sounds that deviate from A Black Mile to the Surface, the effect is fresh and exciting. “Bed Head,” which opens with the snippet that the band teased during their February performance, recalls the protracted and emotional melodies of the previous album’s “The Gold.” It’s an urgent pop-rock song with a gurgling, anxious beat and a kineticism that’s reprised on “Keel Timing,” whose crisp, disquieting guitar riffs give way to Hull’s cool, breathy verses. These two songs, alongside the ominous rocker “Angel of Death,” comprise the album’s beating heart, finding the band in a relatively more energetic mode.

The remainder of the album, however, is composed mostly of midtempo songs that all similarly build to predictable climaxes. Songs like “Telepath,” “Let It Storm,” “Obstacle,” and “Way Back” all rely on an acoustic singer-songwriter aesthetic, and “Telepath” is particularly successful in this regard, sticking to a gentle framework throughout rather than building to the louder, full-band affairs of the others. Sequenced together, these songs feel like a slog.

Centered around a thin, skeletal beat, with Hull’s voice taking on a ghostly affect while the bass slinks on of its own accord, “Dinosaur” breaks up the monotony of the album’s second half. But the closing track, “The Internet,” is shrouded in a dramatic mist of high-pitched choral sounds and foreboding keys that, despite the added tension, is too similar to previous songs on the album. It gradually builds toward a crashing peak that the album has aimed for more than once already, rendering it less of a revelation than a routine.

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 Label: Loma Vista  Release Date: April 30, 2021  Buy: Amazon

Jordan Walsh

Jordan Walsh is a music writer based in Philadelphia. His writing has also appeared in The Alternative and Magnet magazine.

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