The magic of pop-sludge is in the push and pull between the groove and the heaviness. It's this oscillation which lends the sub-genre its name, the "pop" coming from catchy, ear-worm choruses and the "sludge" coming from the weighty tone of its guitars. Each band operating in the niche (not that there's many, these days) needs to choose how to strike that balance. So far, Abrams leaned more into the poppier side of things; their albums have always been filled with a type of buoyant atmosphere, a bounce to their sound. But Loon is a whole different beast. It features an Abrams transformed, now choosing to place most of their, well, weight on the scales. There's still some pop in there and the album goes fast but the sound is undeniably more impactful and present.
Flip on over to "Remains" to get my favorite taste of that on the album. Yes, those are blast-beats. Yes, the vocals are way more impactful than on previous releases and, yes, the guitars are much chunkier. As I mentioned, the "pop" is still there; the track is motivated by the tension between the big, sweeping choruses and those winding verses. But the chorus is sweeping not in an uplifting, simplistic way but in a heavier, more aggressive way, leaning way more on thick drums, guitar licks, and crashing chords which ultimately coalesce into a monstrously powerful scream. Everything bleeds a more aggressive attitude. On previous Abrams releases, "Remains" would be an outlier but that's not the case here. Hell, the album opens with "Glass House" and that track is also very explosive. It's faster than "Remains", a different sort of heaviness.
There are, of course, tracks that bring that "sweetness" I love Abrams for, like "Waves" or "Sirens". That sweetness is made all the better for coming after, or alongside, the heavier elements. A nice trick that Abrams pull off here is that they keep the production similar, or even the same, for these lighter tracks. The compositions are different but the fundamental position of the instruments are maintained on both the heavier and the lighter tracks. This serves to maintain the album's cohesion even as it plays on those counter themes, turning it into perhaps Abrams' "quickest" listen. It's also their shortest album in sheer run-time but there's something more at play here, a certain organizational sleekness that makes Loon very easy to consume.
That's perhaps also my main, and only, criticism of the album: previous releases, and especially Modern Ways, had a very memorable and unique sound to them. Outside of the really heavy moments (I'm not going to forget those blast-beats soon), Loon doesn't really provide those big, unique tracks like "Poison Bullets", "Useless", or "Body Pillow" from previous releases. Still, it's a great album and a super interesting direction for Abrams to take. Instead of doing what so many bands do by "maturing" and aiming for a lighter sound, Abrams double down on the more violent parts of the band. This results in a heavy hitting and massively fun album, more sludge than pop and all the better for it.