Artwork

Gore, guts, viscera — it’s spattered all over the tracks on the Used’s Artwork. The Utah-based quintet's fourth album immerses itself in emotional carnage, conveyed by a sound fusing early-‘70s British metal with latter-day hardcore. As before, singer Bert McCracken manages to infuse his vocal eruptions with more sincerity than most of his peers. Tracks like the maniacal “Blood On My Hands,” the bleak “Sold My Soul,” and the harrowing “Meant to Die” seethe with inward-directed rage, driven home by Quinn Allman’s lead guitar slashes. The band rides swells and eddies of negative energy, emerging from the roar of “Men Are All the Same” and “On the Cross” like battered warriors. Naturally, the love songs here have a harsh edge, though “Kissing You Goodbye” manages to actually sound pretty as well as tormented. The band achieves particular grandeur on “The Best of Me,” tempering moody passages with bursts of all-out screamo abandon. Overall, Artwork gushes with unquenchable rage, yet contains enough tunefulness to entice the faint of heart.