Sometimes I'll go on excessive new-music-hunting bouts, and in general when I download a band's music, I try to get their discography. One thing I love about bands like Daïtro, Envy, and Funeral Diner, who do a lot of split records, is all the little bits of new music I get to hear while obtaining all of the focus band's music. Admittedly, not all of it is good, but a lot of the times you become acquainted with a gem of a band you may not have heard were it not for the split. Sed Non Satiata (French for "Still Not Satisfied") is one such gem. I already knew I liked Daïtro (and I actually heard them on their split with Raein first), so I was getting all of their music, and was surprisingly blown away when I ended up favoring Sed Non Satiata's side to Daïtro's! Don't get me wrong, Daïtro exhibits everything you'd expect from the coveted Euro emo-violence outfit. Excellent displays of emotion through their music, heartbroken vocals that don't seem down & out, superb compositions... but Sed Non Satiata's effortless ambiance fitted by blue vocalizations seamlessly interwoven with downcast fits of screaming and dissonance all packed into seven-minute displays of heart are what catch my ears on this split. Both bands hail from France and nearly all their writing is in French, which I'm a glutton for hearing, even though I don't understand a word of it. I like to treat acts with vocals in a foreign language as almost purely instrumental, letting the vocals become just another instrument to display feeling. Lucky for us, plenty of bands from outside the United States (often including Daïtro) will translate their lyrics to English. Unfortunately, I don't own a copy of this record so I couldn't tell you what they're saying, or even whether it's translated or not! Nonetheless, I recommend you check out this split and enjoy both bands' talents.
"Les hommes sans visage ont investi les rues, ils trainent..."
I tried some translators, and I think that means, roughly, "The faceless men took to the streets, and they marched..."
Sed Non Satiata
1. Less Hommes Sans Visage
2. Des Masques
3. Interlude
4. Des Ruines
Daïtro
5. De L'eau Coule Sous Les Ponts
6. Place Tolozan
7. Nous Ne Participons Pas tous Ici A La Même Utopie
8. Un Fleau Pour Un Autre
This band is playing Arizona on May 29th (Tempe), and 30th (Tucson), and in anticipation of seeing them, I'll be posting their Fun 7" also known as the Hot Green EP. Everyone makes the comparison to Cap'n Jazz and says it's exactly like it, and though I definitely think they have a sound very similar to them, and share a lot of the same characteristics as them, I'd hardly say they sound exactly like Cap'n Jazz. They've still got some of their own stuff going on. They're kind of like a contemporary version of Cap'n Jazz. They're really fun, but kind of in a different kind of goofy way than their predating counterparts were. The vocals are sort of similar, but whereas Kinsella's vocals were a lot more moany singy wailing, the vocals in Algernon Cadwallader are more straight fun and singy. The music in Cap'n Jazz was really chaotic, but still grooving, and this sounds a bit more clean cut and rhythmic, but super entertaining. If you like energetic Midwest indie-emo or anything along those lines, give this a try, and try to listen to it thinking of how it differs from Cap'n Jazz, rather than how it's similar, so then you don't end up just writing it off as a rip-off or something. This EP is a really good sample of what they're like, and if you're into it, I definitely recommend their full-length "Some Kind Of Cadwallader." I actually prefer it, but thought an EP would be a better way for others to access this.
"Let me tell you what I think about frog spit. I'm for it."
1. Spit Fountain
2. Fun
3. Foggy Mountain
This was a super sweet screamo band from Germany, mostly on the softer side relative to a lot of their European peers in the emo-violence scene. They have kind of a zangy sound a lot of the times when they're doing softer stuff, and it transfers well into their more chaotic parts. They can also get really clean (i.e. Mica) and it sounds great. They're just a really honest-sounding emo band, true to the genre.
I'm glad I found out about this band. The way it went was I took a chance on a show for a German screamo/hardcore band I'd never heard of called Trainwreck a long time ago, and ended up loving it and they became one of my favorites of the time. I read about everything they were doing on MySpace after their tour had concluded, hoping they'd say they were coming back (they never did come back to the west coast). I saw this one flier for a local show they were playing, and a lot of German fliers tend to have descriptions of the band, and Grave, Shovel... Let's Go! was playing this show, and I decided to check them out based on their description and I'm so glad I did. Kind of just a chance encounter. Unfortunately, they didn't do a whole lot. Just this demo, a split 7" and a split 12" (those are both really good, especially the 7"). But the 10 songs they put out are enough for me.
"Heart in the hand. My life is your life."
1. Stopp Motoren Under Overfarten
2. You're My Best, Always
3. This Basement Flooding
4. Mica
Your average title: The Third Victim Of Abigail Rutledge - Now The Wine Taste Fermented
So, a friend of mine was recently in a serious accident, and he's now injured, unemployed, uninsured and has a lot of money owed for hospital and ambulance bills. Everybody's broke these days, but he's selling his 5-song demo for just $2 on bandcamp. Seems pretty reasonable to me, considering the circumstances. So, for your convenience, click on the image below to go to the bandcamp, listen to the demo for free, and then if you feel so inclined, purchase it for a mere two dollars. It'll help.
1. Jafronese Dance Party!
2. Crime Scene
3. The Argument
4. So On And So Forth
5. 12/24
6. A Movie Fragment
I've been wanting to post this for a while but for whatever reason just haven't gotten around to it. The Pine are a band who you'd suspect to be around in the early nineties based on the sound of their music and recordings. They were actually around from about 1999 until 2005, but if they'd been playing shows a decade earlier it probably could've been with bands like The Hated, Rites of Spring, and Evergreen. They're mostly pretty fast-paced and energetic emo with a lot of melody, but they also slow it down sometimes ("Face Drawings" and "Shovelglove" stand out). The thing about them that will really stand out though, is their signature vocals. I've never heard another band with similar-sounding vocals, and I can only describe them as eerie. They may come off as whiny, and they kind of are, but not in that flatulent, self-important way that just sucks. It's more of a moan that is perfect for what they were doing. I've really been meaning to listen to the rest of their discography but I'm so stuck on this that I haven't really been motivated to. This album is pretty long because it's their first seven-inch and full-length combined and re-released by a different label.
"This is my place. This is my face. This is my time. Stop wasting my time..."
1. Cubicle
2. Ten Years Old
3. Slug
4. You're The Only One I Hate
5. Wearing Thin
6. Face Drawings
7. My Two Feet
8. Windmills
9. Shovelglove
10. Charred
11. Running On Empty
12. Forced Gratitude
13. Hangnail
14. Numb
