December 31st, 2011 §
These days it’s so easy to describe music as post-hardcore that the term has almost lost meaning. Still, if to you post-hardcore still recalls Fugazi, Shellac, Drive Like Jehu, Quicksand or even more modern mathy outfits like These Arms Are Snakes and (my personal favourites) Future of the Left, it’s highly probable that you’ll derive a great deal of pleasure from We’ll Go Machete’s Strong Drunk Hands.
Angular as all hell is this: dropping sinister looping proto-industrial post-punk riffs like pipebombs among rhythmically shouted vocals and cyborg* drumming, it’s clear from the outset that We’ll Go Machete have happened upon the secret ingredient that makes post-hardcore function. They’ve added a few ingredients of their own, too, because this is not weakly imitative music. Despite the majority of the bands that influenced this band hailing from the long-forgotten and mysterious decade that was the 1990s, We’ll Go Machete have a character that sets them apart.
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December 15th, 2011 §
Last week I wrote a little about how bewildered I was to be sent a number of Christian metal albums to review. I suppose I could have simply chosen to not review them, but I’m game for a challenge.
Some challenges, however, are simply too great. And here we are with The Gospel, by Creations. The band hail from Sydney in Australia and their Facebook page includes this as their mission statement:
Creations embody the gloomy day when humanity murdered Christ; when creator laid His life down for creation, paying the ultimate price for our salvation. The picture is vulgar and the message is offensive; repent and believe the Gospel. We will stop at nothing to “…make disciples of all nations”.
Er, strong words indeed. Normally I’m inclined to express admiration when a band firmly and passionately believes in something, but I’m normally talking about a D.I.Y. approach to music or a dedicated tour schedule rather than a call to unify everyone in the world under one religious creed. That shit is just creepy. I noted in last week’s review that even if I didn’t like their music, Sovereign Strength seemed to be open to a diverse and varied set of philosophies and beliefs within a scene. I really don’t get that from Creations.
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September 6th, 2011 §
It’s only a few months since Diamonds last graced Nostalgia For Infinity; you may recall this review of the An Introduction EP. Crystal Ravens is their first official release and is also the debut release for label Allegiance Records.
I’ll refresh your memory: Diamonds play a distinct and distinctly oddball style of music that draws on disco-punk, powerviolence and the it-means-whatever-you-want descriptor spazzcore. They remind me of an Aged Yummy that grew up listening to Agnostic Front and Born Against alongside !!! and Tortoise. That comparison is unfortunately a bit meaningless; they do fall down a bit here. If you’ve ever heard Deep Elm’s Free Diamonds there are some similarities there, though Diamonds are drawing on hardcore and metal subgenres rather than emo and punk.
The oddball nature of the seven songs on offer here is endearing, though at times where the band unleash their more ferocious moments I found it hard not to wish the songs had more sonic meat on their bones. Perhaps it’s just a restriction due to production costs, a necessity of equipment set-up, or even just my personal preference, but without a thick and full sense of heaviness and volume or even just a hard edge – to support moments of feral posturing it falls a little flat.
This is a little unfair, though, as it’s focusing overly on one small element of the band’s music. There’s a lot to like and little to diss, provided you’ve got the time for unpredictable, improbable yet danceable music. Plus it’d be cool to see these guys live at a hometown show; the idea of fly disco moves exploding into pit action for the chuggy mosh-ready sections is appealing.
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July 14th, 2011 §
Has the patch of ground on which country and punk hybrids grow always been this fertile? Perhaps it’s just a side effect of getting deeper into the music reviewing gig, and being sent records by US PRs that I wouldn’t otherwise come across, but it sure seems like there are a lot more of them these days. No bad thing, though, with the earthiness of country rock and the unpretentious passion of punk making good bedfellows.
So Tin Horn Prayer, from Denver, are walking in the mighty footsteps of predecessors like Drag the River and Uncle Tupelo, and from the off you’ll recognise the similarities. A strong sense of nostalgia. Gruff whiskey & cigarette vocals. Themes like self-medicating with alcohol and dealing with growing older. Maybe country is just where US punks start to turn when they want to age a little more gracefully… or at least a little less disgracefully. Or perhaps country music just represents such a monolithic part of American culture that I can’t see it from where I’m standing.
Whatever; it’s good shit, and I dig listening to it. Especially offbeat and tongue-in-cheek tunes like ‘Crime Scene Cleanup’, a song that is essentially a darkly humorous apology to the eponymous cleanup crew for the mess the narrator will have left behind after a messy suicide. As subject matter goes this wins the rare accolade of being something I’ve never heard before. The music’s jaunty and a lot of fun, too; well-matched to the lyrical black humour.
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June 30th, 2011 §
My initial impressions of Boston outfit Transit’s second album were not positive: whilst I’m not familiar with their past output I am all too familiar with glossy but derivative punk rock. It’s unfair to judge a band before you’ve given them a thorough chance, of course, but I’ve heard enough identikit songs from identikit bands with identikit haircuts and morally vacant lyrics to last me a lifetime.
It’s also unfair, though, because of the signifiers I use to quickly identify and avoid such bands. One such giveaway is overly slick production, which I tend to be quite suspicious of, whereas by contrast production that’s more rough and ready – even if that’s a deliberately affected choice rather than the result of limited resources – I tend to have an affinity for. There’s also a certain vocal style that I pretty much blame Saves the Day and Taking Back Sunday for, and it’s plenty evident here. It’s not a style I invariably dislike, it’s just one that a few years back (when emo-cribbing melodic hardcore was all the rage, before easycore and metalcore shot up the trend meter) was another obvious signifier of a band hopping on a bandwagon.
That’s not to say Transit are guilty of anything more than having a style that reminds me of things I don’t like. There are numerous obvious flaws with attempting to pre-judge music in this way, but where no one person has a hope of even listening to a tiny fraction of all released music it’s a necessary evil.
Happily, despite my initial prejudice I’ve found elements of Keep This To Yourself that I can enjoy, and on repeat listens I’ve not only developed a closer affinity to the songs on offer, I’ve also gained increasing respect for the band’s talents.
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June 28th, 2011 §
There’s something deliciously simple about The Devil, The Death, and Me, Pittsburgh three-piece Run, Forever’s debut album. That’s not to say that musically, thematically or lyrically there’s anything crude about it, only that it’s a refreshingly honest and straightforward affair given the pompous title.
Reference points are obvious from the outset: vocalist Anthony Heubel either possesses or affects a style that immediately recalls Conor Oberst, and from that it’s not a vast step towards Desaperacidos, Oberst’s short-lived punk sideproject from the early 00s, as Run, Forever are significantly pacier and rockier than Bright Eyes. There are also some similarities with indie/punk favourites The Thermals in the album’s thematic consistency (here, chiefly social corruption and struggles to cope with loss and grief) and the band’s anthemic songwriting sensibilities.
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June 14th, 2011 §
Heartless Romantics, the debut full-length release from Tallahassee, Florida’s Only Thieves, opens almost as it intends to go on. ‘All the Sad Young Men’, the warm, melodic opening track, has all of the key ingredients of the rest of the record: there are some good hooks embedded in it, it has a sound inspired by classic punk/early alt rock outfits like The Replacements but with more modern sensibilities, and it even ends with little bit of rock & roll attitude when singer Jeremy Barnes abandons the chorus refrain with a is-it-isn’t-it-nonchalant “ah, fuck it.”
The problem is that compared to much of the rest of the album its hooks are blunter and struggle to find purchase; without much emotional resonance it ends up sounding a little plodding; and even the potentially powerful lyrics and vocals fall short of the target thanks to a fairly uninspired chorus.
Fortunately, that opener is a bit of an aberration: it’s followed by the much catchier ‘Discoveries’ which does a lot more with ingredients that are, if anything, a bit simpler than its predecessor; a simple chord progression and effective melody make it. The more varied lyrics and backing vocals don’t go amiss either. » Read the rest of this entry «
June 2nd, 2011 §
I’ve got to confess that with a name like Octaves I was expecting something a lot mellower, or at least a bunch of punchy pop-punk tunes, with lots of octave chords, mostly written about how girls suck and girlfriends leaving you sucks and possibly also jobs suck. I should’ve guessed from the cover art, though, that this was a more serious, heavier, harder-edged affair. It’s a cool piece of artwork, busy but desolate, washed-out and impersonal.
Octaves the band are from Baltimore and they are fans of brutal, riff-heavy technical hardcore like Converge and Pg. 99. Elsewhere they’re reminiscent of other outfits – for example, first track ‘Fix the Fernback’ recalls modern-era Fucked Up thanks to the slowly sung female vocals alongside the gruffly aggressive guyvox, whilst at the opposite end of the record ‘Absent Kids Count’ sees the band dabbling in longer, more internally varied tunes in a mathcore manner.
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May 10th, 2011 §
Hey, remember when bands weren’t afraid to be English? And not everything was a 2nd, 3rd or further-generation copy of something American?
Although inflammatory statements like that are grossly inaccurate – if you can’t find such music you’re not trying hard enough – there are two reasons I elected to go ahead and write it. The first is that there is a grain of truth there, however small. The second is that Trojan Horse are a defiantly unique band and also an immediately, obviously British outfit.
Prog rock was always a love affair of the British: sure, the Canadians had Rush, the Germans had krautrock, and the Americans can lay claim to some of the earliest work in the genre with The United States of America*. But it was Britain that produced the most famous names of the genre**: King Crimson, Yes, Van der Graaf Generator, Pink Floyd, Genesis… the list goes on. And on. And on. For about eighteen minutes, usually, possibly with a lot of masturbation along the way***.
It’s in this tradition, in part, that Trojan Horse are walking. Deliberately and curiously ambling along, pushing themselves and their listeners in directions that at times challenge, and at times provoke, and at times simply encourage. But there’s no sense of imitation here – how boring and pointless it would be to produce a prog rock record that was content to simply imitate. It’s the playful exploration and ambition regarding structure and composition that Trojan Horse have taken from the prog tradition; their music is just at home drawing on the rich traditions of rock, punk and metal that have developed since the heyday of prog. This isn’t a backwards-looking record. Nor is it particularly forwards-looking, true, but it’s a distinct album and very much of its time. » Read the rest of this entry «
May 3rd, 2011 §
Released in the UK by Big Scary Monsters last November, and in the US by Topshelf Records in January, Hollow Realm is the debut album from the Hereford sextet Talons. You may remember Hereford from, er, the Pretenders and Mott the Hoople. I’m pleased to say that things have moved on a little since then.
Hollow Realm is, in fact, a superb album. There you go, that’s your review.
You want more? You’ll be the death of me. Okay, Talons by instrumental post-rock, an increasingly saturated genre in these times when highly competent musicians are ten a penny. It takes quite a lot of work to stand but they manage it through a combination of skilful songwriting, raw talent, and an instrumental lineup including a pair of violins that sets them apart from the legions of bands sticking with the traditional rock setup of two guitars / one bass / one drummer setup.
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These days it’s so easy to describe music as post-hardcore that the term has almost lost meaning. Still, if to you post-hardcore still recalls Fugazi, Shellac, Drive Like Jehu, Quicksand or even more modern mathy outfits like These Arms Are Snakes and (my personal favourites) Future of the Left, it’s highly probable that you’ll derive a great deal of pleasure from We’ll Go Machete’s Strong Drunk Hands.
