I put on Man Looking Man without knowing much about them and expected another decent post-hardcore record. Halfway through "Symbols of Loss" I realized this thing was going somewhere else entirely.
It took them five years to finish this album, and honestly, you can hear that. Not in the overworked sense. More like the songs had time to sit, get pulled apart, rebuilt, maybe thrown away and started again. Nothing here feels rushed.
What I liked straight away was how uncomfortable it can get. A lot of bands in this area lean too hard into melody or clean hooks. Man Looking Man don’t seem interested in making things easy. One minute it feels like the whole song is about to collapse, the next it locks into something heavy and focused.
"Zegepraal" and "Samsara" make sense as singles, but the deeper cuts ended up sticking with me longer. "369" kept pulling me back. Same with "Glide and Turn". Those tracks feel less immediate, but there’s more buried inside them. "Poslushayte" is probably the one I kept thinking about most after the album ended. Strange closer. Leaves everything hanging.
The rooftop DIY production gives it a rough edge that works in its favour. Nothing sounds too clean. Guitars scrape, drums hit uneven in the right way, vocals sound like they were recorded in the middle of an argument. It fits.
There’s a lot of frustration in these songs too. Not just anger for the sake of it. More like exhaustion with everything going on around them. That came through stronger on the second listen than the first.
That’s probably why the album stuck.
It’s heavy, but not in the obvious way. More in the way certain records leave a weird pressure in your chest after they’re over.
Didn’t expect that. Berlin’s got another good one here.
https://www.instagram.com/manlookingman/
Thanks to Grand Sounds PR.
