Raein recently revealed their new album, "Sulla linea d'orizzonte tra questa mia vita e quella di tutti" and are allowing you to download it for free. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm sure it's great so I'm posting it without caution. It comes out soon in Europe, and will see a US release in the near future. Go read about it and check it out at Raein's website. There is also a link there to make a donation when you download it, if you so please.
1. Se la notte sogno, sogno di essere un maratoneta
2. Nirvana
3. Trasparenti oscure virtù
4. Costellazione secondo le leggi del caso
5. Raein: rumore. Tre
6. Oggi ho deciso di diventare oro
7. Attualità dell'utopia
8. Abitudine, cerimonia, magia.
9. Dopo di noi la libertà
10. Come materia infinita
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
Seven days definitely wasn't enough for me to post all the local bands I wanted to share during locals week. I kind of made it a point to post broken up bands during that week, and as a follow up to locals week I'll be posting current bands. Most will be ones formed by members of bands I already posted last week, but I may also just post some bands I just really wanted to include. I won't be as consistent though since I don't have some event like before to motivate me, haha...
Juliet was formed in the wake of Mouth Of Man, and some of these first songs were actually written for that band before they called it quits. This band has the same guitarist who is now also doing vocals, and the same drummer. They're very new, only playing their first show about a month and a half ago, but they've got a few recordings already and they're working fast. Juliet plays 90's style indie/emo kind of along the lines of Texas Is The Reason, but with the raw aesthetics of Indian Summer. To me they sound a lot like The Hated, or more recently, The Pine. I think this band is going to do some really cool stuff for anyone who appeals to that type of music at all.
"I'll bet you wonder when I wrote this song. I hummed it in my head all day long."
Christmas Island
1. Atlanta
2. Aly Goola
3. Mineral
4. Providence
Lacking
1. Lacking
2. About A Girl (Nirvana)
Locals Week Day 7 - Values Here
Unlike every other band I've posted over the past week, I didn't get to grow with this band. I actually just showed up at their last show and saw them by luck. It was a really good one. Final Fight was the touring band, Values Here and Can I Say both played their last shows, and Red Son and Day After Day played, too. It was at a long-gone, sorely-missed venue too: The One Place. That show is just full of great things in memory. I bought my first piece of vinyl at this show, before I even had a record player (Final Fight / Life Long Tragedy 7" because Final Fight impressed me so much). Values Here impressed me too, so I bought this farewell EPCD. I also got a Red Son shirt and a Day After Day demo, and leaving the show I felt like I totally scored, having never bought anything from any small-time bands. The show was supposed to be Can I Say and Day After Day's split 7" release show, but they didn't have it ready in time. I bought that at the next show I went to where they had it. This show was really formative for me and music. Values Here played a Descendents cover (Bikeage) which is what made me listen to "Milo Goes To College" for the first time. Quite a while later when I was interviewing Deadair (two guys from this were in it) for my zine, they told me they learned that cover in the van on the way to the show when they were coming back from Las Vegas. I have to wonder if they played it well, given that I didn't know what it was supposed to sound like at the time. Sounded good to me!
"I'm the king of this gloom, but my scars show through; reminding us of the knife that went down in our tombs."
1. The Stranger*
2. Tulsa
3. Track Down And Kill What Swallows You Up
* Guest vocals courtesy of Drew Wilkinson of Run With The Hunted-fame
Locals Week Day 6 - Malakai
I was looking through all my music trying to figure out what to post next, and this one definitely stuck out even though there were tons that I wanted to include. Malakai were (and on special occasion, are) so fun to see live. They played downcast, dramatic mathcore, and when I say dramatic I mean they utilized drama for the album. The thing that made this album stick out in my search is that the lyrics are a script and the album tells a story of the struggle between an emperor, his son, and his court. This is still an extremely unique concept to me. I've heard of albums that tell a story, but the way this one was executed is stupendous to me. III & V are my favorite acts. If anyone is interested, I could transcribe the lyrics/lines.
"Bow your head, and still the drums. Make way, for The Emperor comes."
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V
6. VI
7. VII
Locals Week Day 5 - Antietam
Antietam (later known as Days of Awe because of a previously Antietam-named band, and that's funny because these guys had a sister band called Butcher Jones which ended up being a taken name as well) were straight edge band that played sophisticated, melodic hardcore with intelligent lyrics. A few of the guys in this band started a new project called The Rule, The Law so keep an eye out for more from that. There seems to be a theme with this Locals Week thing ... "Sad to see them go."
"I'm so utterly misguided. I keep mistaking the streetlights in the morning for the moon."
NOTE: I compressed the files before scanning the CD insert for a good album artwork image, so if you like to have good album artwork, don't forget to copy and paste the image below.
1. Streetlights (AM)
2. The Hounds
3. Lichen
4. Obergeist
5. Streetlights (PM)
6. Resonant Frequencies
Also, here's a review of the EP that was written for a zine my friends and I used to make.
