Kubra Commander’s ‘Metabolic’ is, easily, this label’s strongest longform release this year.
I confess to waxing lyrical before I drop bombs, but allow me to shift gears this time and say this in the plainest declarative: Kubra Commander’s ‘Metabolic’ is, easily, this label’s strongest longform release this year.
It treads that razor-thin wire between heart and art quite well, and we’re lucky it does.
My critical tendencies tell me to probe so I do, but Bobbi Olvido is routinely evasive in all our pre-release Q&As. That’s par for the course, though.
His evasiveness and my effusiveness are not the best of dance partners, but they could be. He delivers the bare minimum by way of artsy psychobabble, and I proceed to gush anyway.
The short of it is that ‘Metabolic’ has the weight of the personal and the gravity of the universal.
After all, the songs are pulled together by a terribly hardworking figurehead who’s corralled a roaming cast of co-conspirators across different facilities (DLV Studios, Capital Dreams, Kusina la Madera), and through a universe of warring idioms.
If Kubra Commander’s earlier 2025 releases hinted at the group’s expanding emotional breadth – songs where “intimacy wrestles with immensity” and “low-stakes confessions balloon into cosmic longing,” as I have previously described – this full-length outing sharpens their musical thesis like a blade.
As for their influences – early Coldplay, Oasis, Kasabian, Death Cab for Cutie, Johnny Marr – they’re more akin to phantom presences than off-frame shadows that loom uncomfortably close to the proceedings.
Most importantly – and I stress this because I free-associate their work with excessive liberty – Kubra Commander stays true to their volatile-but-calcified form without fully succumbing to pastiche. In every Kubra number, melody is sovereign, and melancholy is currency.
And while we’re speaking sovereign, when one considers ‘Metabolic,’ it’s readily apparent that the land is fertile and the territory rife with character, in a manner of speaking.
“When the World Ends,” for starters, blooms with hall-wide acoustics and echo-drenched voices: a sing-song hypothetical that turns into a lovelorn epistolary address. It’s deceptively simple, yes, but the gut punch isn’t any less painful.
“There’s Something on My Mind,” meanwhile, offers sharp contrast. Replete with an upbeat Cure-like jangle, meandering strings, and a twee spin, it’s the kind of tune that gets you on your feet but, strangely, also pins you tighter to your sheets.
Where the Olvido DNA is on supreme display, however, is “Only You Can Save a Life”: there’s Marr levity, there’s Moz lethargy, but above all there’s Bobbi energy: earnest, emphatic, effervescent. In lesser hands, that tasty cocktail turns to a dud, but here, it fizzes beautifully.
Shifting tenors is “On the Outside,” with riffage that’s hypnotic, melodicism that’s magnetic, and scope that’s anthemic. It may be a bit of a unicorn in the Kubra catalogue: a song you can picture soundtracking a breakthrough…or a breakdown.
“Life on the Moon,” another cornerstone track, is magnificently strange. Soundscapery kicks it off, moody chord-work ferries it through, and sonic poetry allows it to soar. It’s not quite Ziggy Stardust, but it puts you in that headspace; it’s not quite the Gallaghers, but the ambition edges sumptuously close. If Kubra Commander ever had a space opera moment, this would be it.
“So Don’t Fade Now” is a portentous-sounding minor-key banger: a player that sounds like a prayer. It’s more temperamental Stone Roses fare than middling Britpop.
“The Darker Grey,” meanwhile, hints at artier leanings. With shimmers of Bowie and glimmers of arty, out-there Ray Davies, it’s numbers like this that make the case for the continued existence of the album as a serious longform format.
“Safety,” on the other hand, starts on a Minus the Bear-esque (synth-bass) note – proceeds to build there, in fact – but takes it to signature Bobbi territory.
Skipping over a few tracks we get the magnificent “Have Your Little Dance Now,” laudable for its triumphant stab at a lighthearted turn without resorting to lightweight ways. There’s a joyful jingle to its jangle, and there’s marauding mischief in its otherwise morose manner. It’s a striking paradox of a listen, and you can do a happy-sad dance to it, too.
Yes, I know I’ve gone through almost all the tracks, but ultimately, each hardworking, hard-banging cut in ‘Metabolic’ makes it worth its twelve-track sprawl.
Olvido calls his musicianship on the record “challenging,” and his lyricism “introspective, reflective, meditative.” Across twelve tracks, he stirs “existential melancholy” and the “pursuit of purpose and meaning.”
And while he sees ‘Metabolic’ as simultaneously novel and familiar, listeners may hear it as something else entirely: a band entering its fully oxygenated phase, testing the atmosphere, kicking the dust, and asking – gently, but also urgently – what it means to keep going.
Have a plateful of ‘Metabolic’ today. Chew on it and relish every bite. I can’t say it goes down easy – it doesn’t – but I promise: it’s good for you. It’s basically indie veggies.