Justice's latest release is by no means Cross pt. II. That should have been clear when the surprisingly eclectic single "Audio, Video, Disco" was released a few weeks ago. Although there certainly was a part of me that hoped naively that their sophomore LP would be chock full of immediately accessible goodies like "Let there be Light" or "DVNO". The truth is, resoundingly, that this is not the case.
Cross boasted songs that you could easily slip into a DJ's playlist at any club without a drop off in dance potential. AVD instead allows the duo to showcase their experimental abilities instead of just introducing more stuff that's instantly gratifying. "On'n'On" starts off at a crawling pace, featuring a full set of lyrics that develop over the course of the song in a very rock fashion as opposed to the repetition of bite sized house phrases.
The neo-classical disco theme is still very prevalent on the album with dramatic key shifts and much pomp as on "Canon (primo)" which is the theme for "Canon". "Brianvision" is heavy on these loved Justice tropes as well but with far more guitar than most are used to hearing. "New Lands" also brings a lot of guitar distortion and bombastic rock style to the record and a hard-rock coda that could have been played by Tony Iommi.
Fairweather fans will not be as entranced as with "Cross" but the songs "Audio, Video, Disco", "Civilization" and "Helix" excel at capturing at least some of the same house mastery the duo is best known for. For the most part, the noodling and experimentation succeeds in showing the Justice is capable of evolving and trying new concepts.
