Keelhaul

Triumphant Return To Obscurity is the second bout of music from Ohio's Keelhaul this year, a full-length follow-up to the You Waited Five Years For This? seven-inch. Unsurprisingly, this album not only maintains the tongue-in-cheek path the quartet have been on since becoming active again but it also ensures that a half-decade of downtime hasn't hindered them in the slightest. Kicking off with instrumental acrobatics on "Pass The Lampshade" before getting down to brass tacks on mathematical yet groove-oriented progressive number "Glorious Car Activities" and rocker "Everything's A Napkin," the band's ability to fill every gap in their music with something — cymbal hit, melodic guitar passage or what have you — is stunning but not overly busy. When coupled with a modestly less aggressive stance overall, Triumphant Return comes across as what Pelican might sound like with vocals or if Mastodon turned down the distortion and admitted where their real influences came from. Yet another impeccable Keelhaul affair destined to be sadly overlooked.