Have Mercy – The Earth Pushed Back

May 21, 2013 • Topshelf Records

Topshelf Records has been on fire lately. You Blew It!, Prawn, The World Is a Beautiful Place..., and this album a couple months ago. Top shelf stuff indeed.

Have Mercy takes a slightly (okay, significantly) poppier approach to the post-hardcore / emo stuff that I've been all over lately, and believe it or not that's not at all a bad thing. They crank out lots (and LOTS) of melody, with catchy lines all over the place and hook after hook (I've had "Let's Talk About Your Hair" stuck in my head for days) and some especially-powerful choruses (just check out the end of "Hell", it's fantastic!). It's in no small part thanks to having lots of really great dynamics; the album runs the spectrum from heavy pounding sections to quiet, introspective, almost post-rock parts (not to mention a neat little departure into alt-country for "Living Dead", which works really well).

Surprisingly, the vocalist is the shining star of the album by far—while the instruments are all quite good, he really carries the music to extra heights. His style is quite diverse, from almost-murmurs to emotive and powerful screams; and sure, maybe the lyrics are a bit cheesy (it's emo, after all) but damn if it isn't great to listen to.

Sure, maybe it's not a masterpiece, and some songs are definitely better than others, but this is an album I love all the way through. I can only hope they keep up this staggering momentum; but even if not... damn has it been a good time for emo lately.

8

No Omega – Shame

April 10, 2013 • Throatruiner Records

No Omega is another piece of evidence as to how metal and punk are slowly assimilating into the same thing—just some heavy, angry music—but they're also making me wonder if that's necessarily a good thing.

Stylistically, it's quite a mixed bag; there are some nice sludgy breakdowns, plenty of faster hardcore/crust sections, and even the occasional blasting bit, but they're all stacked one after the other and don't fit together particularly well into one whole. One one hand, it keeps things from getting too samey, but at the same time it can feel too chaotic sometimes. (Not on a huge scale, but it's there.)

It comes off like an album that doesn't feel entirely sure of itself; the vocals imply music a lot more aggressive than what is actually going on most of the time musically and songs often stop with no discernible ending. None of the riffs in particular stick out, and songwriting is equally unmemorable. It's a weird experience that I don't really care that much for.

Overall, I guess it's definitely a listenable album, and plenty of people will find it good, but it's not one that's going to be making any waves and I personally will probably have forgotten all about it in a month or two. Plenty of other bands are doing this better and I can do without Shame.

4

Prawn – You Can Just Leave It All

June 14, 2011 • Topshelf Records

If they keep making good emo revival albums, I'm gonna keep making reviews. Of course there is the issue of quickly running out of things to say when many of these albums are pretty similar, even if they're good, so I'm not entirely sure what to say about You Can Just Leave It All aside from... well, it's another pretty good emo revival album.

So there isn't a lot to say about their sound; Prawn mixes in that modern heavy post-rock style with complex, twinkly guitars and some highly melodic (but not terribly emotive) vocals. The writing itself is quite good, with very driving, purposeful melodies—few similar albums have such catchy songs to them, and most songs have at least one good hook that makes them stand out.

I am a bit disappointed that, aside from the superb guitar work, the rest of the instrumentation is a bit lackluster. It's neat to hear the occasional glockenspiel and stuff like that, but the bass and drums aren't nearly as exciting as they should be, and the guitar has to carry the whole thing. It makes the music feel a little one-dimensional, though the good songwriting and multiple guitar layers help make up for that.

And there is the unfortunate fact that Prawn has been overshadowed (in my mind) by quite a few other similar artists lately, so while I do think this album is pretty good, there are others that basically direct upgrades of this one. But I guess I'm not going to say no to more of a good thing.

7

Thursday Bloom – Halcyon

June 1, 2013 • self-released

Apparently there's this thing called the 12 EPs challenge where an artist will put out one EP per month for a year straight. It's a neat concept, and even though I barely know anything about it, some good is definitely coming from it.

Thursday Bloom's fifth entry, Halcyon, is ambient music mostly composed of string instruments and piano, like chamber music played very slowly. Though it's very simple, the atmosphere, textures, and aesthetics of each piece are all very well-realized. It feels like the sort of thing that might work well as a dramatic, somber film score, which is pretty neat.

On the other hand, its very short length does leave a bit to be desired (often the case with ambient and drone). But despite its short and perhaps slow pace, Halcyon is definitely an enjoyable little nugget of music; Thursday Bloom does seem like an artist worth looking into more.

6

The Phantom Carriage – Falls

February 28, 2013 • Throatruiner Records / Braincrushing Records / Theatre Records

Genre boundary lines when it comes to modern heavy music are so blurred nowadays that it's become really difficult to describe some albums nowadays. What is Falls? I suppose you could call it a combination of black metal and screamo with a bit of Converge-style metalcore thrown in for good measure, but it's tough to say. Regardless, it's pretty safe to say that you'll know if you might like it from that description alone. It's not bad, but I'm not a huge fan.

Granted, the music can be pretty interesting. Complex arpeggiating guitar riffs, intense drumming (blastbeating and otherwise), the occasional breakdown; it's all there, with a suffocating atmosphere evoking the cover art well. Sometimes the music gets a bit too technical for its own good, though, and it's all too easy to lose focus as the riffs pile up on each other into a cacophonous wreck (take "Mistakes & Fixes"' frantic ending). At the same time, though, there are plenty of really awesome bits that stand out—for instance, I really like the slow burning feel of "Dreamers Will Never Stop Dreaming"; it gives the song something a bit more interesting above all the blasting.

On the whole, though, I'm not really feeling Falls too much. Maybe it's just my taste—after all, I've never gotten into Converge, and this band has a lot of similarities; this sort of super-chaotic songwriting simply doesn't resonate with me. For fans of this style, I suppose I can see this being a hit. But I'll give it a mild pass for now.

5