With MIRRORISM, Galway quartet In Athens had already found a solid middle ground between post-punk, shoegaze and ’90s alt-rock. Their new Blowtorch Records single, Dead Reckoning, doesn’t tear that up, but it does push things into bigger, heavier and more expansive territory.
It opens on a dry, repetitive pulse, steady enough to feel almost obsessive. The guitars sit on top less as traditional riffs and more as shifting layers of sound, piling up and warping as the track moves forward. The repetition brings Autolux to mind, while Gráinne Bleasdale keeps her vocals restrained and lets the guitars do most of the heavy lifting. Her detached, ethereal delivery gives the track even more atmosphere without ever softening its weight.
Dead Reckoning circles around the idea of moving forward along a path that might not even be your own. There’s a constant sense of searching, of chasing a destination that may not exist at all, and that fits neatly with the song’s obsessive pulse. Music and lyrics are pulling the same way: keep going, try again, push on, even when the destination is far from clear.
The structure itself is familiar: calm, build, brief lull, final release. In Athens aren’t reinventing anything here, but they handle the rise well and make the payoff feel earned.
By the final stretch, the song shifts gear. The clipped pulse of the opening loosens, the rhythm section gets more space and the guitars start to swell, pushing the track towards something much bigger, very much in the spirit of Mogwai’s “Rano Pano”.
It never collapses into chaos. Instead, it keeps opening out, taking up more and more space until it finally reaches the scale it had been hinting at from the start.
Catch In Athens on Instagram | Facebook | YouTube