London Road - Modestep

London-based Modestep slant their outlook inwards and backwards to their roots for their second studio album "London Road". Simply put — it was an instant classic.

At the time of producing this album, Modestep were a four-member band of Josh and Tony Friend, Pat Lundy and Kyle Deek. They claim "London Road" is a unified, cohesive project that achieves what their debut album could not — in that it represents Modestep as a group and the London music scene as a culture — and on that, I fully agree. With genre-jumping from grime to drum n bass, brostep to alternative rock, "London Road" concretizes Modestep as a band that resides in electronic music, but a band nonetheless — a band set out to typify the spirit of London in a way which no other genre cocktail quite could. Josh's vocal is incredible, interacting phenomenally well with anything the guitar riffs and grimy basslines throw at him, guiding the tracks over rocky brostep sustains and fast-paced DnB beats with emotion and vigour, a natural in the spotlight. But the production is perhaps better — for a 2015 brostep-infused project, much of the frenzied sustained basslines have aged well over time, perhaps as a product of pertaining less to the American brostep trends (despite taking much from them) and instead harkening back, with respect, to dubstep's London-based origins (such as the Culprate collab in "On Our Own"). Reggae and grime pay their dues in the final two tracks, an integral influence to much of the UK electronic scene, with their tribute in the final two tracks — including "Game Over", a bombastic finale featuring 6 separate grime MCs for a near perfect album closer. Drum n bass comes in waves, solid snares striking hard, energizing "London Road" and shepherding the complementary alternative rock when the guitar launches into another barrage of riffs and vocal support. The blend of rock and bass is nothing but tasteful, and with Josh's impeccable vocal layered on top, "London Road" is the domineering herald of London's rich music culture, polished and consistent. "London Road" doesn't break boundaries, it artfully demonstrates to us that those boundaries were never there in the first place — London is one entity, unified and cohesive, and you better believe that "London Road" is too.

Modestep absolutely did one hell of a job on this project, to the point where there is quite literally no filler. Everything here feels genuine in its sentiment, quality in its execution, hard-hitting in its production and diverse in its idea. Rock and bass trade blows behind some lovely vocals and lyrical hooks, and it compacts into 50 minutes of mature sonic exploration, a sometimes wistful, sometimes energized look back into the past. There are a couple of old-fashioned or otherwise dated production choices here that haven't aged well, but for the most part, "London Road" remains to this day an essential electronic album.