Northern Liberties’ eighth album, Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe is aggressive, nasty, intelligent, and cosmic. As with many of their releases, the band bases their approach in a huge soundscape driven by competing percussion and singer Justin Duerr’s PIL-meets-Blinko howls. As the band’s negative title suggests, the release dwells on mankind’s cosmic lot as well as the gears of the universe. In fact on songs like “Star Spangled Corpse,” gears and clocks clink away in the background, suggesting a sort of astral design… and that design seems specifically bleak.

The Philly group does continue their general theme here- marching band drums driving the procession forward in a death-rock cadence while they contemplate the big questions. Duerr switches from a controlled musing to freak-out howling in the grooves, while the band bends and twists what feels like massive walls of sound. There are tinges of Alice Cooper, Rudimentary Peni, Pil, Bauhaus and any sort of nasty acts. But, whereas most modern goth or death-rock bands would play into cliché, Northern Liberties specifically walks away from things like bats and Victorian capes and looks at the bigger picture. That is, these songs aren’t dress up, they are true attempts to find truth in the universe, or at least a way of communicating a feeling that connects mankind.

A lot of albums are big and brash, but few are as… mature… as Abandoned Universe. The members are in their 40s now and they are still having fun with ghoulish concepts, as most heavy music does. But, they temper both their lyrics and bombast with a calculated expression. They’ll still get down in the darkness, but it’s a more informed dig. Maybe this is due in part to Steve Albini’s engineering- like Eno, he likes to trim the fat. This album is pure NL.

Northern Liberties have umpteen release to their names, many which take the band’s core concept and apply a certain spin- remixes, guest vocalists, etc. This album is a return to their core- it’s basically NL doing what NL does. But, it hasn’t been done this effectively… nor as accessibly, before. It seems that Northern Liberties are always trying to express some high concept or emotion that never quite translate to the more human audience. They’ve done it this time for sure. This album is a soul shaker.