Metric, ‘Speed the Collapse’ – Song Review

The new Metric single ‘Speed the Collapse’ is a catchy as it is cataclysmic.

Opening with the tense texture of James Shaw’s frenetic guitar, ‘Speed the Collapse’ quickly adds Joules Scott-Keys’ titanic toms and the bed of frontwoman Emily Haines’ synthesizer, building a futuristic ecosystem for her taunting, sultry, cybertronic vocals rife with rhyme and imagery: “Distant like a thunderclap, watched our neighbors house collapse / Looked the other way.” These moments describe the violence done by time and a fatalistic urge to get away from the unavoidable.

This is a pop punk apocalypse, a New Wave nightmare: Haines sings of oceans boiling, rivers bleeding, of “auctioning off our memories / In the absence of a priest.” (OK, we don’t get that one — maybe she’s a little too literary for us.) They “scattered what remained,” which, by the sounds of it, is a chaotic confetti of terrific-sounding terrors — all flanked by those gigantic drums and Josh Winstead’s oceanic bass.

The listener has been wrecked and thrilled and wrecked again by the time the song opens up into “ahh-ah-ahhs” at 90 seconds in, a choral uplift among all the upheaval. It’s a rare blend of destruction and inspiration, of poetry and punk rock, of “seeing only possibilities … but then the storm returned for more.”

Elemental, instrumental, phenomenal: Everything you could ask for.

‘Collapse’ is the second single to preview ‘Synthetica,’ Metric’s fifth full-length album, out on June 12.

Listen to Metric’s ‘Speed the Collapse’