Release Date: 7 November 2025
Song Count: 11
Rating: 8.8/10
Description:
A remaster of the 2015 metalcore album Node, today's album is the newest of many by the Australian band Northlane, consisting of four members, two of which having been in it since its very beginnings in 2009. This particular release came to be as a celebration of the original album's 10-year anniversary, consisting of new production and partially brand new rerecordings of tracks, now with fully lowercase letters and ending in a ".exe" suffix, as if they were software programs waiting to be opened.
Metaphorically opening these links by playing them takes you through a 46-minute long metalcore experience filled with the fitting set of instrumentation to pull off some heavy tunes, riffs and hard-hitting breakdowns, alternating vocals that go from singing that can range between a variety of emotions and strengths and expressive metal growls of power and pain, clearly structured songs following narratives within themselves, and a very cleanly produced package of music.
Though sound-wise, a lot of the tracks may resemble each other at first glance, the ups and downs they each have, the separate paths they take and where they land by the end sets them apart more than sufficiently to avoid any sort of problem with songs blending into each other. And as highlighted, the incredibly versatile vocals and the way they can dominantly pave the way every second of the entire album walks on, able to release copious amounts of power in one moment and soften in another, is something to remark.
What also struck me as a standout feature of the album are its lyrical contents which are wildly different from anything one would expect from a work of this genre - a lot of the tracks center around contemporary topics like environmental destruction and social isolation induced by the digital age, attempting to break free from a corruptive and unjust world and stand one's own ground, stumbling along the way but nevertheless refusing to give up hope or faith on the indomitable human spirit and the good in the world, and achieving salvation and peace within oneself and with all of humanity. Providing an outlook on the world that is aware of its many current flaws and poisons but simultaneously holds onto optimism for the future, as well as calling for direct action to change things as they are, this type of messaging is quite unusual in an art and music genre where so many bands, artists and works turn to misanthropy, pessimism and focus on the darkness of our species out there, but it is certainly refreshing and a welcome approach.
The only potential nitpick I could possibly have with the album as a whole is the specific wording used within some of the lyrics treading into territory of preachiness and "overdoing" with its on-the-nose approach, even if this, of course, surfaces with only the best of intentions to make the messages delivered by their art clear, and the potentially slightly more formulaic structure to a lot of the songs, though this wasn't an actual personal botherance to me, especially with there being songs that very much break from that mold, such as "weightless.exe", a very unique song in of itself.
Node: Reloaded is overall a standout act that far exceeds expectations with its approach that differs from its norm and captivates by doing so. Albums like these are why I began with this challenge - and this blogsite - to start with: as a means of discovering music that shines above its competitors, which Node: Reloaded absolutely sticks the landing on. Consider me very excited to hopefully get to explore more of Northlane's catalogue over the course of time - these guys have found their golden corner of music, and they won't stop at any point to abandon that corner or give it away anytime soon.