Elephantine

Akimbo's third full-length album is the Seattle art-hardcore trio's strongest release yet. Growing both more musically complex and harder-hitting with every release, Akimbo has perfected a style of music that has all of the tricky riffs, dynamic shifts, and time signature changes of post-rock, but with a pounding, direct intensity that completely lacks the studied cleverness that's often the downfall of that style. Similarly, bassist Jon Weisnewski's lyrics toy with spiritual and mythological imagery without falling into metal's Dungeons and Dragons mentality on songs like "The Golem," "Delilah," and "Bitten from the Thigh of Zeus," making Elephantine a hardcore album that connects on more than a purely visceral level.