Old Love

http://oldloveaus.bandcamp.com/

Here's a 5 track EP that my mate put me onto. The songs are a nice mix of several genres - Post hardcore, Hardcore, Skramz/emoviolence and a couple of prog-sludgy segments as well. The interesting thing is that a lot of the riff work is quite unexpected and dark while still sounding very post hardcore, however still staying heavy and strong as if it never left the hardcore itself. The melodic follow-ups complement the heavier sections well.

Give it a shot if you want. Or don't. Fuck you.

Tom Odell - Long Way Down

Tom Odell - Another Love
Listen closely people, this is how you make a song APPEAR to be good.

Now the thing that brought my attention to this album is that NME slammed it with a 0/10 review which would indicate that it has no redeeming features, AT ALL. So I got my hands on it and gave it a listen, keeping in mind the criticisms that the NME review had, saying the album did nothing original and took elements from all the industry's most boring indie artists of the time and put it into this album. What was my verdict? Well...

There's things this album does right. The album's production and song structure are pretty stellar - it's got a big stadium vibe and the addition of piano puts it a little bit apart from similar bands in the genre - but the review was right. This does sound like an amalgamation of Mumford and Sons/Florence and the Machine.

However, the album shits me. The first thing that threw me off about the album is that it kept falling flat lyrically. Odell would be setting up the verses to what should have been wrapped with brilliant metaphors, but those metaphors never came. Matter of fact he'd do a disservice to his songs by setting up some brilliant piano numbers but then having really, really, incredibly, awfully, terribly shallow pop lyrics, constant moans in the backing vocals and repetition of themes and song structure. It's very well constructed, but just annoying to have to listen to because of the repetition and the overall cheesiness. It kind of shits me in the same way that Imagine Dragons do because it feels like I'm listening to a giant cliche.

Alright, I'm cutting it off here. I'm getting a little bit annoyed at how something that has such good production could still wind up being repetitive and shallow. I mean not to say it's a bad album, if you're into that channel V bullcrap, this album is for you... But I've had my stint of listening to piano heavy albums (or at least tracks) and the piano is not an instrument you take lightly, or pair up with a complete lack of dynamic or meaningful lyrics.

Fuck man. I mean that NME guy is a tool because this is at least a 5+ for production alone, but after two listens in I'm getting angry at the album.

Have A Nice Life: The Unnatural World advance play on P4k

New England shoegazers Have A Nice Life (Consisting of Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga) are finally back to make you feel awful about everything with the release of their highly anticipated album, The Unnatural World. This album takes a step back from their dreamier, poppier tones from their previous album, and decides to create a more focused, darker album.

I have yet to write a proper review for this one. I'm letting it sink in fully before I go out of the way to type up a post about it. However, I will say this - my first impressions are that Dan Barrett knows he's got a following now, and I believe he's using that to try and get away with making some less than fantastic tunes by experimenting or forgoing dynamics. He and Tim are still keeping it quite interesting though, they've thrown in what I percieve to be post-punk elements with the song Unholy Life, darker indie rock elements with Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate.

So far my favourite song is Burial Society. Listening to Guggenheim Wax is what despair sounds like - wretched, drawn out, taunting you like some kind of fucked up voice in the distance, and as an opener it sets up the album really well. The remix of Defenestration Song is not as bad as I gave it credit for, but still feels like they've mixed it a bit crap for artistic merits. 

It's as if the negativity that festered in Dan's Giles Corey project has bled into this album. The passion of both the musicians isn't as vibrant as it was over Deathconsciousness and the Voids EP, it's a manifestation of misery. Like I said before, this is much, much closer to what despair would sound like if you gave it form, not loud but drawn out, taunting you from behind a wall of ambience in a similar way to how the mind taunts a person when everything else is background noise.

http://pitchfork.com/advance/317-the-unnatural-world/

I'm now on Last.fm!

Now you can find out what I'm really doing at home with my headphones on! Am I listening to great jams? Emo crap? Porn?

http://www.last.fm/user/Teabowne

Other news, I'm about to start a Tumblr to do some publicity for a music festival within the week. I'll update this post accordingly.

First gigs of the year

Agents of Abhorrence at The Tote (3/1/14)

For a grindcore set, I found the set to start off slow. They had a singer come and fill in for them while the main singer was absent (which apparently happens a lot for the band), and the fill in guy was a bit flat with his screaming, especially the timing. However, about 2/3rds of the way through the set, one of the band's old singers jumped on and absolutely SHREDDED it. The crowd got animated, the set had rhythm, everything was in absolute chaos. For 15 bucks, the set was well worth it. Also my first gig of the year!

Besides that, I caught a band called White Walls playing before hand that had a sort of noise rock vibe to them. Their set started slow, but by the end there were some great progressive jams going on and it was pretty good listening to a wall of noise that wasn't grindcore.

Before that was a band by the name of Internal Rot. I remember three things, the drummer being fucking insane, the face the guitarist pulled as he was shredding the fuck out (that face being the kind you'd only pull when three types of things are happening in your nether regions at once) and the vocalist (who was the drummer for Agents) keeping the vocals tight and in line with the music. Good set.


I was gonna do one for crystal fighters that I got in free for thanks to my mate Roon dog (a nice and very animated set) but I'll pop that one up later.

Skywave - Synthstatic

2014 people. Lets do this.

Skywave released their third and final album, Synthstatic in 2003. This album managed to do two things right; firstly it took the post-punk sound laid out by bands like The Cure and Joy Division and revive it in a blast of distorted, self loathing noise rock. Secondly, it set the stage for A Place To Bury Strangers' third album, Worship - both albums sound incredibly similar in both song structure and musical style. Before accusing anyone of plagurisation, Oliver Ackman who fronts APTBS was previously the bass player for Skywave, including on this album. Does that make it ok? Considering they are both fantastic albums, I'm willing to say yes.

I think the reason I'm enjoying this so much is because every song has a different mood to it. You're not so much listening to an album as you are listening to some whacked out rollercoaster of overdone synth jams, and I mean that in the best way possible.. The first track 'Tsunami' opens the album in a really 'in your face' manner by throwing distorted drums and loud bass at you, where as four tracks in you get a beautiful, slow and more spaced out song with 'Nothing Left To Say'. The rest of the album throws songs that are poppy, gloomy, sexy, noise-punkesque - and while I wouldn't say that they're all worth a listen, what is good on this album makes up for the weaker tracks by a long shot.

Well shit, they don't have all the tracks for the album readily available. Here's one of the more noise-punk tracks - Kill Me Dead (By Skywave obv.)