Mogwai – The Bad Fire (2025) [FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

Mogwai – The Bad Fire (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 54:50 minutes | 620 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rock Action Records

The arrival of a new Mogwai album – their eleventh – is cause for great celebration. The album’s title, The Bad Fire, is a working-class Glaswegian term for Hell. It reflects the difficult time that members of the band were going through. New to the studio was American producer John Congleton, known for his work with Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant and pretty much everyone in between. Congleton’s work can be heard on the album’s three singles. The album opener “God Gets You Back” sounds like Daft Punk being hunted by My Bloody Valentine, while “Fanzine Made Of Flesh” sounds like a victory parade for a baby yeti; and “Lion Rumpus” does actually sound like a lion rumpus. The music of Mogwai is a difficult thing to describe, but an easy thing to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head which should by rights fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire.The new Mogwai full-length is an absolute treat, with more percolating keyboard sounds but still plenty of guitar dynamics, and a not-unpleasant vibe of unease throughout. It’s a step sideways from their 2021 Dave Fridmann-produced, Mercury Prize-nominated predecessor, As the Love Continues, which brought the experimental quartet unexpected commercial success.

The record’s title, The Bad Fire, is the first clue that we’re in different territory with the band in their thirtieth year. “Bad fire” is Glaswegian everyman slang for hell, and the label’s promotional materials plainly—if euphemistically—state that the name reflects “the difficult time that members of the band were going through.”

Whatever’s up now with these pioneers of moody post-rock, they clearly channeled that inner turmoil into some serious outer bliss working with producer John Congleton—no stranger to majestic neo-prog acts with a resume that includes albums by Explosions In The Sky and Sigur Rós. This is far more than a therapeutic exercise, it is monumental trauma response rock.

It’s perhaps lazy with instrumental bands to compare their work to a soundtrack, but simply listening to The Bad Fire turns your life into an exciting film. And yes, it sounds like the end of the world as we know it, or an acceptance that we live in a time of overwhelming and all-consuming transformation.

Opener “God Gets You Back” works John Carpenter-esque refrains into a noise-accentuated synth crescendo, while the subsequent three tracks cover familiar territory as punishing guitar riffs layer upon each other only to drift away like the tide. The best of these tunes, “Fanzine Made of Flesh,” even submerges a catchy vocal chorus into the mix. (“18 Volcanoes” later on also has singing.) And tracks like “Pale Vegan Hip Pain” are flat-out pretty. As the record progresses, the sounds get sunnier; “Hammer Room” has the upbeat feel of an early Grandaddy track. The album ends with more melodic noise, as the heady, fast-paced, guitar-shredding roar of “Lion Rumpus” fades into the stars-twinkling-at-night notes of “Fact Boy.” The Bad Fire is powerful, moody, often gorgeous, and needs to be listened to loud as hell. – Mike McGonigal

Tracklist:

01. Mogwai – God Gets You Back (06:40)
02. Mogwai – Hi Chaos (05:24)
03. Mogwai – What Kind Of Mix Is This? (04:11)
04. Mogwai – Fanzine Made Of Flesh (04:34)
05. Mogwai – Pale Vegan Hip Pain (04:24)
06. Mogwai – If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others (07:22)
07. Mogwai – 18 Volcanoes (06:18)
08. Mogwai – Hammer Room (05:16)
09. Mogwai – Lion Rumpus (03:33)
10. Mogwai – Fact Boy (07:02)

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