Kids today don’t appreciate how good they’ve got it. Back in my day (groans), it would take hours to download a single song, so you would have to carefully weigh what you were interested in hearing so you could make the most of your download time. If you just discovered a new emo band, you would typically spend your precious time downloading other emo bands, only rarely straying beyond that.
Now, thanks to streaming platforms and high speed internet speeds, you can jump from Sunny Day Real Estate to My Bloody Valentine to Slayer to Body Count to 100 Gecs instantly. The floodgates are open.
One of the most interesting byproducts of this unfettered access to the whole of recorded music is the widespread cross-pollination of scenes and genres. I’ve been around long enough to see how shoegaze, metal, and hardcore have interbred to create heavier shoegaze (or gazier metal?).
I listen to a lot of that sort of stuff, so it takes a bit for me to be impressed anymore. And “impressed” is a weak word for my reaction to Blanket, whose second LP Modern Escapism recently grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention.
Modern Escapism blends elements of shoegaze and metalcore, but it doesn’t live in the middle ground. Rather, the dreamier and more brutal elements of Blanket’s sound coexist at the same time. Downtuned guitar chugs, gritty bass lines, and machine-gun drumming drive the rhythm of the song while spacey leads and ultra-clean vocals float peacefully above the battle raging beneath them.
“White Noise” opens the record with as clear a mission statement as an album can make, presenting their combination of shoegaze, post-metal, hardcore, and alt-metal like an alchemist demonstrating their prowess. You might feel the urge to shout along, but the vocals are far too delicate for that. There’s a kinetic energy that almost demands a mosh pit, but the breakdowns are bookended by a gazey dreaminess that might sedate you too much for moshing. There are a couple guest screamers—Gost on “Romance” and Loathe’s Kadeem France on “In Awe“—but they do little to break the trance. “Where the Light Takes Us” closes out its anthemic dreaminess with a gnarled breakdown that finds the lead guitar reaching for Slayer-like wickedness. Closer “Last Light” is cinematic and dynamic, starting delicately with ambient guitar soaring over a piano line and building to an abrupt end that teases a climax that never comes, leaving you unsatisfied in the best way.
Their genre experimentation isn’t wholly unique. It’s in line with what bands like Moodring and Loathe are doing, minus the all-out brutality. Hell, Deftones wrote the book on this stuff twenty years ago, even if they’re only recently deserving all the credit they deserve for it. But something about the way Blanket mixes these influences without dulling any of them is truly special. This record was an instant buy on the first listen, and even a dozen listens later, I’m still spellbound by it.