genres: metalcore + electronic
This is what nostalgia sounds like. To me, at least. The first ‘proper’ heavier album I got fully immersed into, this album I happened across by accident has had a massive impact on the types of music I like. There’s an unfettered joy flowing through this debut album, showing a band making the music they want, not what their fans or label expect from them. Most of the time when a release is clearly from a ‘young band’, it’s a mark or undeveloped talent or derivative songwriting, but that’s not the case here. While there’s a straightforward innocence to the lyrics that’s incredibly unusual for the genre (or really, modern music as a whole), the music is top notch. While the band has released several more developed releases since that are all great in their own way, none have captured the magic of this album.
It’s hard to pick just a few highlights. “Worth It?” is a powerhouse of an opener, giving a clear opening statement about what’s to come in anthemic fashion for both lyrics and music. “Heartquake!” is up next, and is one of my all time favorite songs. Combining pulsing electronics, aggressive hardcore chord progressions, and polyphonic lead melodies, this song is jam packed with everything that makes mid 2000’s metalcore fun. Songs like “Sea of Smiles” and “Daylight Through the Nightlife” follow in similar fashion, as straightforward upbeat post-hardcore that are a cut above nearly everything else in the genre. Later in the album however, experimentation is the key. Rather than taking an approach to stretching the genre through mathematical precision common to most attempts to transcend, tracks like “Poetry’s Not so Pretty” do it almost by accident. Again, the band’s early disposition towards doing what they want let’s them mix elements as disparate as southern metal, ‘spazzcore’, Rise Against-esque melodic punk, and 180+ BPM club music into a single track. Though a complete departure from everything else here, the largely acoustic album closure “Breathe” is a beautiful track, again reinforcing the band’s focus on this album towards a hopeful innocence. In a genre packed full of dark ruminations, it’s a revolutionary approach that few contemporaries (or even since) have been able to match.
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