It’s difficult to know what you’re in for when you hit play on a Helms Alee record for the first time. The heavy Seattle outfit has been clumsily tossed into dozens of genre categorizations over the years, including doom, noise rock, grunge, post-rock, and post-hardcore. For my own part, they caught my attention when I saw them listed on a Wikipedia article as a hybrid of sludge metal and shoegaze.

None of these terms are completely off, but none of them are quite on the money either. Their triple vocalist lineup doesn’t help to categorize them either, with voices ranging between dreamy cleans, Kim Gordon-esque hollers, gritty baritone, and throaty screams.

That said, they have never sounded as fearless and unknowable as they have on Keep This Be The Way.

Despite their far-reaching fusion of genres, Helms Alee has typically kept their sonic palette confined to the sound of three people with drums and guitars. There might be the occasional synthesizer, but by and large, their arrangements didn’t go beyond what the trio could play live. On Keep This Be The Way though, all bets are off. The studio is used to full effect (due to the pandemic pausing their tour schedule). They augment their heavy rock palette with dreamily disorienting atmospheres of keyboards, reversed cymbals, strings, warped vocals, and even saxophones.

But that doesn’t mean that they’ve softened their edge at all. In fact, it might have even made them more fiery. Their riffs have always slayed, but with the added ambience adding contrast, the heavy moments feel sharper than ever. Take for instance the burst of bass fuzz in the Beatles-by-way-of-Built-to-Spill-esque “Mouth Thinker.” If the whole track were heavy, it wouldn’t have been anything of note. But interrupting the clean guitars and almost cheery harmonies makes it sound far more ominous.

It’s a bold mixture, but it results in what is inarguably the most diverse and refreshing release in their catalog. From the woozy opening of “See Sights and Smells” to the prog dreaminess of “Guts for Brains,” Helms Alee never lets up on their Seattle-grunge heaviness, their disarmingly dreamy melodies, or their fearless weirdness. And when the results are songs like “Tripping Up the Stairs,” “How Party Do You Hard?” and “Do Not Expose to the Burning Sun,” even the heavy metal purists will have a hard time complaining.

Keep This Be the Way is out April 29 through Sargent House.

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