Future of the Left - The Plot Against Common Sense (2012)
I love it when an album is unexpectedly awesome, either because you had mixed expectations for it, or you knew nothing about it. For me, this album falls into the second category: I have a word doc with thousands of album recommendations listed in it that has sat and grown for years. Often I'll put items into the list and have no recognition of them when I pull them out again, as I did with this one.
This is a post-hardcore album which is equal parts bass chuggery, Unwound high-pitched dronery, and industrial static tweakery. It's pop-punk melody meets avant-prog dissonance, with vaguely nerdy, desperate half-sung shouting through it. It's never boring, and constantly surprising, and lyrically it's bitter and sardonic, at times hilarious. AND they're WELSH. I guess if Los Campesinos! did post-hardcore, it would sound half-way like this.