DECLINE AND FALL

It's a pretty ballsy move calling an album "Decline and Fall", especially when it's your comeback after nearly a decade has gone by without any studio work from you has come up. This followup to A History of Madness feels, to be honest, just a little lukewarm. All the usual Thinking Plague motifs are here, but somehow they add up to less than the sum of their parts, and at points it feels like the band hit on something which could be a really nice art-pop tune which they they then feel obliged to clutter up with the sort of RIOish mayhem we expect from them.

Is this the sound of a band clinging to their old sound for so long they begin to repeat themselves, or flirting with the idea of changing direction but ultimately chickening out? We can't know for sure, but what I do know is that if you have In Extremis or In This Life you don't have any need of this.