METRIC - Romanticize The Dive

With over two decades of career behind them and now at their tenth album, Canada's Metric confirm themselves as one of the most underrated and unjustly overlooked indie rock acts of recent decades. That's exactly what "Romanticize The Dive" proves, the new record that finds them reasserting their skills and the solidity of an eclectic yet compact style, drawing on influences ranging from rock to disco, all converging into a coherent and distinctive sound that deserves far more attention than it usually receives.

Already with the recent double act of "Formentera" (2022) and "Formentera II" (2023), the Canadian quartet had turned quite a few heads among a new generation of listeners, who weren't around when the band debuted back in 2003 with "Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?". With this new work, Emily Haines and co. set out to look back at those distant but never-forgotten origins.

According to the frontwoman, in fact, the record recaptures what can be considered the band's "essence": the solid, by-now tried-and-tested foundation of a sound that works without excess or rough edges – a pure yet multifaceted indie that embraces pop leanings, doesn't forget the synth lessons of the 2010s, and reclaims a certain rock vigor that, as with so many veteran bands nowadays, had seemed to be missing in recent years.

You can hear it clearly in a nostalgia-tinged song like "Time Is A Bomb", or in "Tremolo", both tracks that take the mind back to the early guitar-driven indie of the 2000s. But there's also room for synth-disco moments like "Crush Forever", the best song on the album and an unexpected gem; or for the swelling dream-pop – with a shoegaze climax – of "Clouds To Break".

Across eleven tracks, the album delivers a wide range of indie shades, underpinned by the skills of a band that's been on the scene long enough to know exactly what it wants and how to get it. That doesn't mean "Romanticize The Dive" is exactly a masterpiece: it's hard to call it the best Metric album, even just within this decade; but at the same time, it's impossible not to sense a confident, direct piece of work, with the depth and quality of an "old-school" rock band, not one assembled amid TikTok, influencers and market research.

In short, Metric reaffirm themselves as one of those musical acts you can always turn to with confidence, precisely because, paradoxically, they've always stayed on the margins of the scene: which is exactly why they remain "honest", despite all the growth and the journey behind them. "Romanticize The Dive" certainly won't be the album of the year: but it's a good thing, in 2026, that a band like Metric is still out there giving us music like this.

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05/05/2026