Few bands have misrepresented themselves quite as severely as when Cloakroom described themselves as “stoner emo.” Certainly, there was no way that they could have predicted the wave of bands like Mom Jeans (and nothing like Cloakroom) that would be described as “weed emo,” but even without that confusion, there’s not much emo about what they’ve ever done. They have borne a resemblance to a certain 90s alternative band out of Champagne-Urbana, but they’ve always been much closer to HUM than Braid.
But the stoner bit…that’s never been up for debate. Extracurriculars aside, their guitars have always carried the same sort of heft as stoner metal bands like Kyuss and Sleep. But Dissolution Wave sounds the most like what I could imagine wafting out of my older brother’s bedroom carried with wisps of sage-masked pot smoke—if I had an older brother, anyway.
