Before this past Audiofeed, I didn’t know anything about Everything In Slow Motion. And so, I didn’t make a point to catch their set, opting instead to reconnect with some friends that I only see a few times a year.
But during those conversations, I couldn’t ignore the anthemic, melodic post-hardcore ringing out from the main stage. As I left the fest, their name stuck in my mind as one to watch out for.
Musical taxonomy is an interesting thing. Genres twist and mingle like gnarled branches, running parallel to one another but being careful not to touch.
Take for instance, metal and emo. Despite their affinity for sonic catharsis and death, there’s very little camaraderie between the two. However, they each have a symbiotic relationship with post rock. Metal and post rock have fed off of eachother for decades, with bands like ISIS and Mogwai liberally reaching across the branch. Similarly, emo and post rock have much more in common than loud/soft dynamics and precious sonic elements. Bands like American Football and The Appleseed Cast have been mixing the two for two decades. And yet, metal and emo have remained distinctly distant despite this shared commonality.
But on Isolation Ritual, Boston’s HarborLights bridge the gap in a way that never feels incongruous.
For years, I’ve mistakenly thought of Black Sabbath as a one-trick pony—probably on account of the monotony of the horde of copycats citing their catalogue as their bible.
But after digging deeper into their discography, I can see now that the source material is much more diverse than I could have imagined. Vol. 4 is especially varied, and not just in comparison to their other records, but within its own tracklist.
If history is kind (and accurate) it will remember Alcest as one of the most important metal bands of all time.
After all, the flood of bands fusing the passion of black metal with the textures of shoegaze and the drama of post rock (see: Deafheaven, Oathbreaker, Brutus) are taking pages from their playbook. Their debut EP Le Secret fused these elements together in a way that many bands are still using as a blueprint—and it came out in 2005.
For their debut full length, math rock monsters Narrow/Arrow offer up a ten track song cycle about how much they hate Ohio.
Who gave them the key to my heart?
The first time anyone sees Narrow/Arrow, their eyes are drawn to the same thing…Cody Nicolas’ second guitar, clamped to a keyboard stand in front of him. Everyone speculates as to its purpose, but no one is prepared when they see him play both guitars in tandem.
Naturally, that visual is completely lost in an audio format—which is why it’s a good thing that Narrow/Arrow relies more on quality songwriting and composition than on live gimmicks.
Remember when Local Natives was an indie rock band?
I certainly do. But after the delicious synthpop of Sunlit Youth, I came to peace with the fact that they’d probably never write a song like “Sun Hands” or “Breakers” again.
While I wasn’t surprised to see them to further embrace pop sensibilities, I was a bit shocked that Violet Street explored the disco-tinged soft rock of the late 70s.
Did I say shocked? I meant frickin’ delighted.
Influence is a funny thing: one person might hear an obvious influence all over a band and say, “oh, this is just a shameless ripoff.” Another might say, “no, this is incredible, it sounds just like them.”
In this case, the band is Lo Moon, the influence is Talk Talk, and I am one thousand percent the second individual.
In the summer between eighth grade and freshman year of high school, I gained possession of a Tooth & Nail compilation entitled Songs From the Penalty Box, Vol 4. That CD was my introduction to a number of bands that would change my life, such as Squad Five-O, Blenderhead, Craig’s Brother, Calibretto 13, and The Juliana Theory.
But nestled at the very end of the compilation was a track called “Spraypaint (We Won’t Carry Over),” a riotous blend of garage rock, punk, and ska that entranced me. And for the last several years, I have been trying unsuccessfully to track down a vinyl copy, without success.
Then last week, a record store on the East Coast discovered a box of copies that they just forgot to open. And so, I have finally added this masterpiece to my collection.
With all of the punk and hardcore kids starting shoegaze bands these days (see: Nothing, Turnover, Pity Sex) and bands implementing more of that lush instrumentalism into their sound (see: Touche Amore, Title Fight), it was only a matter of time until a hardcore band became a full-fledged shoegaze band.
It might seem like a massive jump for a hardcore band to shift to the gauzy, dreamy lushness of shoegaze, but Hundredth does it in a way that still captures their punk fury. Continue reading