Underoath - disambiguation (2010)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solid State Records, November 9, 2010

Tracklist

1. In Division

2.Catch Myself Catching Myself

3. Paper Lung

4. Illuminator

5.Driftwood

6. A Divine Eradication

7.Who Will Guard the Guardians

8.Reversal

9.Vacant Mouth

10.My Deteriorating Incline

11.In Conclusion

 Underoath’s 2010 release is not just my top preference from their discography.  Dark, heavy, and experimental, it is one of the first heavy albums I listened to, and one that influenced how I listen to music today.  Water is a recurring theme on this album, from some of the lyrics to the music video for “In Division”.  What makes this album so strong is the way that Underoath fully immerses the listener into the imagery and mood they convey.   Track three, “Paper Lung” shows this very well.  “Paper Lung” is a beautiful, atmospheric, and ultimately crushing track that builds to a climax and conveys imagery that transitions from still, calm waters on a cold lake to being dragged down underneath the surface.  The Radiohead-inspired "Driftwood" is one of the band's most experimental songs and really does wonders for the album's atmosphere and pacing.  There's not a moment of wasted space here.

 

Spencer Chamberlain’s performance is something else here.  He conveys a raw desperation and brutal self-examination that brings furious purpose to songs like “In Division” and “Catch Myself Catching Myself”.  Additionally, for taking over the clean vocals in the absence of Aaron Gillespie during this album cycle he does a fantastic job.  Tim McTague's driving guitar tone on these songs further brings Spencer's urgency to the forefront.  It’s well known that many songs on this album are about Spencer’s struggle with drugs (fortunately he is now clean) and nothing is lost in translation in terms of the disillusionment he conveys.  As far as the sound of this album goes, there’s more to it than just the metalcore style of their previous material, as there’s a post-rock and alternative metal influence on “Paper Lung” and “In Completion”, as well as the experimental track like “Driftwood”.  This album is more than simply a high point for the band; it ranks among my favorite records of the 2010s.

Rating: 10/10 

 

Devil Sold His Soul - Blessed and Cursed (2010)

Century Media, July 12, 2010

Tracklist

1. Tides

2. Drowning/Sinking

3. Callous Heart

4. An Ocean of Lights

5. Frozen

6.The Disappointment

7. Crane Lake
8. A Foreboding Sky
9. The Weight of Faith
10. Truth has Come

This entry is one in a series of ten-year retrospectives from my favorite albums of 2010. The placement of a band named Devil Sold His Soul might seem a little ironic immediately following the section on Haste the Day, but this post-hardcore/post-metal group from the United Kingdom has a sound that is far more angelic than devilish.  Somewhat under the radar, Devil Sold His Soul is probably one that deserves more attention as well.  In 2010 they toured with fellow U.K. – based group Architects and released an intricate and beautiful album on the Century Media label.   

Blessed and Cursed marks their second full-length release.  The title alludes to the duality of the post-hardcore sound they explore here, but I feel like this one has more going for it than one might expect.  Additional instruments, including the piano, are layered along with the guitars in a way that enhances the mood and never feels generic.  Here we have hooks that would feel at home on a modern rock/post-hardcore band paired with song structures that are often lengthy and structured differently from the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge format.  So while the vocal approach is fairly typical of this genre with a transition from an angry rasp to smooth crooning cleans, the track lengths and progressive song structures give these songs a refreshing novelty.  "A Foreboding Sky" is a nice example, starting as a piano-driven song and gradually building up across the song's eight and a half minute runtime.  This is the longest track on the album, but the majority of the songs on Blessed and Cursed exceed six minutes and take their time to build up to a satisfying finish.  

Devil Sold His Soul is clearly a band that knows what they are doing.  The vocal melodies and hooks are pretty enough to make the songs immediately accessible, and together with interesting progressions and atmosphere you get nothing short of a winning combination.  Thus, this album receives a score of 8/10. 

A Hope For Home - Realis (2010)

Facedown Records, March 30, 2010

Tracklist

1. Nightfall
2. The Overman
3. Withering Branches
4. The Machine Stops
5. No Light
6. Post Tenebras Lux
7. First Light of Dawn
8. The Crippling Fear
9. The Warmth of the Heavens
10. Seasons
11. Ascension
12. After

This entry is one in a series of ten-year retrospectives on my favorite albums from the year 2010. A Hope For Home, an Oregon-based group, started out their career as a post-hardcore group and then transitioned to an abstract mix of sludge and post-metal. Realis was released under Facedown Records, a label that focuses on straightforward hardcore and metalcore, though sonically it diverges from that sound. Rather than following the template of the genre, A Hope for Home includes a lot of atmosphere and allows each song to progress at its own pace to a natural climax.  In 2011, the band would go further down the post-metal route with the seven-track In Abstraction, which has the theme of fire. 

Thematically, Realis has a strong emphasis on light and the absence of it, which is reflected in both the song titles and the album’s tonal shift from futility to hope. As the two-song introductory segue of "Nightfall" and "The Overman" would indicate, this is a project that is fully devoted to its strengths as a whole album - not a compilation of individual tracks. “Ascension” is the shining moment of the album with an expansive, magnificent instrumental section that lets the music convey emotion on its own. The bleak dreamscape of "No Light" is another song that stands out. The shift towards hope begins with the seventh track "First Light of Dawn", and the concepts are so well organized that Realis could easily be two separate EPs titled "Night" and "Dawn". Guitarist Tanner Morita has stated that this album marked the point where "we truly stopped writing music for others and began writing music for ourselves - raw, noisy, and imperfect as it may be."

A Hope For Home have created a dynamic masterpiece with this album. While "No Light" and "Ascension" are the songs that stand out the most to me, the album and the spiritual concepts behind it work marvelously as a whole.  For those reasons, Realis earns a near-perfect score of 9.5/10.  If you're a fan of post metal or post hardcore, make sure you don't miss one.

Dayseeker - Sleeptalk (2019)

Sumerian Records, April 19, 2019

Tracklist

1. Drunk

2. Crooked Soul

3. Burial Plot

4. Sleeptalk

5. The Embers Glow

6. The Color Black
7. Already Numb

8. Gates of Ivory

9. Starving to Be Empty

10. Crash and Burn

Forming in 2012, Dayseeker is a relative newcomer to the post-hardcore scene, but has built up a solid reputation, predominantly off the strength of vocalist Rory Rodriguez. It has been a little over two years since their last project, July 2017's Dreaming Is Sinking//Waking is Rising, which was a conceptual post-hardcore project influenced by Trainwreck by Boys Night Out. Sleeptalk, the band's fourth effort, strikes in a decidedly different direction. The lyrics here primarily focus on girls, dysfunctional relationships, and human nature. The post-hardcore style has been dialed back to a more melodic modern rock sound. While not a total reinvention, Sleeptalk is a boldly divergent outing and is easily Dayseeker's softest album to date.

The band's greatest asset is clearly vocalist Rory Rodriguez, and he is the reason why Sleeptalk's step away from the band's 'core' roots works. The album's increased focus on R&B and pop spotlights his clean vocals further. A good example of this is the third track, "Burial Plot". Opening on a soft, ambient tone, the well-calculated atmosphere emphasizes Rodriguez's clean singing and holds back the guitar distortion until the chorus. Both heavy and light elements have always been present in the band's sound - they've included softer "reimagined" versions of their own tracks on the special editions of their first two albums and on an EP released after their third. This time around, Dayseeker takes that softer, electronic-driven direction and puts it front and center. However, this is pop-influenced, not a pop album, as the guitars, drums and rock structures still play an important role.

"The Color Black" is a track that combines the heavy and soft, mixing some screaming and heavy guitars in with a piano line. The first single, "Crooked Soul", provides an accurate sampling of the album and showcases Rodriquez's emotive vocal performance. The piano rock of "Already Numb" and the power ballad "Starving to Be Empty" are two songs fully emphasizing the softer end of the spectrum. Sleeptalk concludes on a strong and unexpected note with "Crash and Burn". This closer fully builds up to a climax and ends on the heaviest moment on the whole album, actually including a metalcore styled breakdown at the end.

Dayseeker has proven with this album that they are one of the more underrated bands in the scene and are worthy of attention. However, at 36 minutes in length, Sleeptalk could have benefited from including more tracks or structural variety. There are only nine actual songs, as one of the ten tracks, "The Embers Glow" is simply a one-minute interlude. With the radio success of artists like Bring Me the Horizon, Sleeptalk is an album I could see getting substantial airplay at a station like SiriusXM's Octane, or rock radio in general. Sleeptalk is a successful blending of pop with post-hardcore and earns a score of 8/10.

Wolves at the Gate - Eclipse (2019)

Solid State Records, July 26, 2019

Tracklist

1. The Cure

2. Face to Face

3. A Voice in the Violence

4. Drifter

5. Enemy

6. Evil Are the Kings
7. Eclipse

8. Response

9. History

10. The Sea in Between

11. Alone

12. Counterfeit

13. Blessings and Curses

A step above the majority of Christian rock/metal, Cedarville, Ohio's Wolves at the Gate has gained a positive reputation in the metalcore scene along with several longer-running Solid State label mates. Eclipse is seven years removed from the band's full-length July 2012 debut Captors. The band is notable for their strong influence of 2000s post-hardcore bands such as Thursday, Blindside, The Receiving End of Sirens, and especially Thrice. Since Captors, Wolves at the Gate has experienced minor lineup changes and explored different territory with each album.

The eclipse theme is clear and consistent throughout in the lyrical content of the album. Imagery of light and darkness, faith and doubt, and truth and lies is prevalent throughout. While Eclipse goes in a more hard rock direction compared to a metalcore sound, the back and forth interplay between clean and harsh vocals remains prominent. Drummer Abishai Collingsworth makes his presence felt with a strong rhythm section behind each track. "Face to Face" and "The Sea in Between" introduce spoken word into the band's sound. Opener "The Cure" is a melodic metalcore single comparable to "Flickering Flame" from their last album in tone and structure. The next two released singles "A Voice in the Violence" and "Drifter" also appear early in the tracklist. Discussing doubt and faith, "A Voice in the Violence" is contextually similar to "The Cure", and "Drifter" follows more of a heavy alternative rock structure. The final single "Counterfeit" shows up near the end of the album as the second to last track and is one of the weaker tracks. Elsewhere, "Face to Face" is a clear highlight, bolstered by an anthemic hook and symphonic overtones. "Enemy" is likely the most straight-up hard rock track and is comparable to Thrice's "Hold Up a Light". The lone ballad and title track "Eclipse" thematically explores doubt and questioning one's faith. It is the album's strongest moment, offering a nice contrast between the calm atmosphere of the verses and the progression to a heavier rock sound.

About the only element Eclipse lacks lacks a standout, emotionally moving track that covers the entire soft-to-heavy spectrum of Wolves at the Gate's sound. The penultimate Types and Shadows track "Hindsight" exemplified this and helped that album make a lasting impression. Previous closers like "Man of Sorrows" showcased a buildup and a clear contrast, so I would have liked to see a dynamic track like this one on Eclipse, since "Blessings and Curses" is rather anticlimactic as a closer. Wolves at the Gate has done better with past releases Captors and Types and Shadows, but overall Eclipse is another strong release from a skilled band. The musicianship is solid and the album concept is well executed, strengthening the whole of the project. I give it a score of 7.5/10.