I very quickly found myself wanting to hear more of Tallah after soaking in the magnificence of The Generation Of Danger, so it didn't take long before I listened to their debut album Matriphagy, the full-length expansion to their No One Should Read This EP.
Because of all the chronological reasons, both from me as a listener and them as a band, it really feels weird to think of this album as a predecessor. Having heard it after The Generation Of Danger, knowing the band wrote most of The Generation Of Danger before Matriphagy, and simply because both of them are so similarly top notch that there's no difference in quality to lend as reason to a time difference. In a very weird way, I think of Matriphagy and The Generation Of Danger as sister albums, not conceptually or anything, just two sides of the band.
Matriphagy boasts a much darker storyline compared to its concept album brother, and coincidentally happens to be a slightly less melodic album, which can be interpreted as "heavier" to a certain extent, even though both records are plenty heavy. Since the No One Should Read This EP existed as a complete story, expanding the tracklist is bound to have some filler storyline, but they did remarkably well in keeping the concept storyline engaging throughout a much longer runtime.
Matriphagy may not personally be as big of a goldmine of moments for me than The Generation Of Danger, but there is absolutely plenty of great ones throughout and is as much Tallah as The Generation Of Danger.
The theatrics are still alive in songs like Kungan and We, the Sad, the vocal range is still evident in many songs but especially Overconfidence, the rapping is still as fast in songs like Too Quick to Grieve and Red Light, and the instrumentals in every song is still as beastly.
The familiarity curve definitely kept its presence, but having heard Tallah a lot already made it a lot easier to sink into Matriphagy. I think that as much as there are things Matriphagy have in common with The Generation Of Danger, they are also vastly different in essence. There's a subtle but evident difference in the atmosphere they create in Matriphagy, the theatrics play differently because of the characters involved, the darker tone bleeds into the grooves, chord and melody choices, and the pacing feels different with their tracklist and interlude arrangements. In fact, I didn't expect them to have the borderline of pain be where it is, or exist at all, for a band of their calibre, and it did surprise me for them to have a traditional interlude anywhere to be honest.
I can definitely see why their fans love Matriphagy so much, and I absolutely do love it too, but I have to say that I personally love The Generation Of Danger more. They are both stellar albums, but The Generation Of Danger beats out Matriphagy by a hair, just for first impressions and an overall slightly better experience. Matriphagy fucks though, let's make it clear. Brilliant story, brilliant music, no misses anywhere.
Rating: 9/10