ULTRAPOP (WHITE VINYL) | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Helms Alee, Across the span of their first five studio albums, Seattle trio Helms Alee have consistently refined their signature sound-a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing thunder and sludge, and heady guitar pop filled with lush guitars and elaborate three-part vocal harmonies that reach widely across various subgenres of the heavy music world. On their latest album, Keep This Be the Way, the band expanded their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by recording the album themselves, creating their most dynamic and technicolored work to date. Guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen, bassist/vocalist Dana James, and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis found refuge during the pandemic in their music and bunkered down in a makeshift studio in Verellen's amplifier shop, recording songs with the assistance of Ron Harrell as they were writing them, composing the material with the added benefit of hearing them come together from the engineer's chair. Keep This Be the Way still very much sounds like a Helms Alee record, but it's their first album that diverts from the faithful recreation of their live sound and delves into a vibrant tapestry of surreal sounds and invented spaces. 1. See Sights Smell Smells 2. Keep This Be the Way 3. How Party Do You Hard? 4. Tripping Up the Stairs 5. Big Louise 6. Do Not Expose to the Burning Sun 7. The Middle Half 8. Mouth Thinker 9. Three Cheeks to The Wind 10. Guts for Brains