***1/2 Cast Iron Hike

WATCH IT BURN

(Victory)

"There came a day when I pulled the carpet out from under my world," begins the first song off Cast Iron Hike's full-length debut, a dispatch from the enlightened end of the metallic-hardcore spectrum. Much of what follows explores the internal negotiation, apprehension, and pangs of regret that accompany any attempt to transcend one's roots -- and the consequences of learning to straddle the identity gap between leaving and starting over.

Watch It Burn is an idiomatic negotiation -- singer Jacob Brennan's voice comes in somewhere between full-on and the evasive tenor of Fugazi's Guy Picciotto or Nation of Ulysses-era Ian Svenonius. And though Cast Iron Hike can hang with the most academic post-hardcore bands -- "I Won't Wash Off" has Slint/June of '44 overtones in its transition from humid, expectant understatement to torrential air-raid squall, and the album ends with a 15-minute-plus soundtrack/noise experiment -- they aren't afraid to tear shit up with jackhammer math-core crunch. They can be cerebral without becoming deliberately opaque, elementally heavy without giving up their sense of sonic curiosity -- and still emerge with their dignity intact.

-- Carly Carioli

(Cast Iron Hike play an all-ages record-release party at the Rat this Saturday, June 21.)