As long as I’ve been in the emosphere (read: like 2001 or so), I’ve somehow entirely ignored Japanese screamo pioneers Envy. It’s quite likely that I heard their names thrown around with acts like Orchid and Loma Prieta that I didn’t like at all, and assumed they would carry all of the same abrasiveness.

Had I known though that they leaned much closer to post rock than to hardcore, I wouldn’t have waited fifteen years to listen to this masterpiece.

Musical taxonomy is a very strange and imperfect science. Hard lines are drawn between genres that actually have a lot in common (case in point: hardcore and metal). And when bands start searching outside of their narrow scenes, they sometimes end up in similar places.

Envy cut their teeth in the mid 90s playing frantic emotional hardcore. There were scraps of melody occasionally, but for the most part, they thrashed violently through screamed vocals and fast riffs. But as they continued, the group grew fascinated with post rock (due to exposure to follow Tokyo band Mono, one has to imagine), and began to implement elements into their own sonic palette.

Meanwhile in France, a  young musician named Neige was going through a similar progression, integrating elements of post rock and shoegaze into his project Alcest, taking it from a traditional kvlt black metal band to pioneering the fusion genre blackgaze. Alcest’s blackgaze EP Le Secret was released in 2005, this record a few months later, in a stunning example of aural convergent evolution.

I only point this out because if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know I really really love Alcest, and so you’ll understand the importance of my comparing this album to them.

It wasn’t a reference point I was expecting when I first queued this album up on Spotify. After all, nobody would compare Orchid to Alcest. And given the circles I’d heard Envy mentioned (and my brief exposure to their early material), that’s what I was expecting.

But this record has none of the same frenzied hostility. Even at its most aggressive, it remains triumphantly gorgeous. Strip away the screamed vocals, and this would be a post rock classic, alongside works like Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven or All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.

However, the vocals don’t do a whole lot to make it an abrasive listen, even at their most throat splitting. Instead, the scream almost sound joyful at times, as if Tetsuya Fukagawa’s gratitude has swollen beyond his earthly form and must escape out of his mouth. They add another layer of gladness on top of the mostly major-keyed harmony of guitars. During the quieter moments, he often recites Japanese lyrics in a spoken word fashion—even more occasionally singing with clean vocals.

The guitars are much more typical of post rock than hardcore, often coated in a thick syrup of reverb, shifting between sparse clean arpeggios and fiery walls of sound. The drummer ride the dynamics deftly, occasionally moving to glockenspiel when things quiet down. A few soft blasts of horns pulls it even closer to post rock.

While I usually pull single tracks out to analyze, this record is too cohesive to do that. The songs are all equally mercurial and gorgeous, matching the peaks and valleys of the rest of the songs. Listen to this whole record at your earliest convenience. If you need convincing, I leave you with the fifteen-minute centerpiece, “The unknown glow.” Enjoy.