Album of the Week Club (UNDER CONSTRUCTION / WILD WEST)

SowiesoGroyp

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i've never gotten into non-screamo/non-emo post-hardcore. to me, the genre tends to sit in an awkward place where it has a lot of traits that could be appealing -- intensity, complexity, chaos, loudness -- but they're not present to the extreme that they are in other genres and thus culminate in a sort of lukewarm blur. there is noisier noise rock (or actual noise, obviously), there is more complex progressive rock or math rock, there is more intense screamo. and hardcore punk itself, with shorter, simpler, energetic songs, is more "fun." when i really like something that is "post-hardcore," it's usually incidental, and the music usually transcends the conventions of the genre. so this is not an album i would tend to seek out and listen to on my own. i was hoping that the math rock tag on this album would shake things up and make it more exciting for me, but i didn't really feel it. to use a fantano-ism, where are the "angular" chords? where are the "odd" time signatures? i wouldn't call this album math rock, nor would i think to associate it with slint.

"hey cops" and "broken heart of a neutron star" are the standout tracks for me -- i like the sort of "spoken" vocals breaking up the monotony; the more subtle build-ups drew me in more so than other songs, and i felt a better sense of the personality of the vocalist. i have a hard time getting on the right wavelength when the music is supposed to sound "angry" but is not vitriolic and hateful and injurious to my ears. the second half of "one who hangs" brought in a satisfying level of dissonance which perked my ears up, but it wound down sooner than i would have liked, only to reset back into the familiar sound that has made most of the album a blur for me.

the tragedy of impassioned guitar music is that, in my view, it's often all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
 

SowiesoGroyp

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i DM'd cheesy guy a reminder since he hasn't logged in since thursday
otherwise, it goes to vagabond, but he might not log in either...
so then it'd go back to me already :eek:
 
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