AWmusic

There is a sickening trend in the Canadian music industry, where a band who’s sound is played out, and growing tiresome, use their success to go out, start a label and sign equally untalented sound-a-likes and shove them down the thoughts of those who for one reason or another still rely on the radio for music. Example: Nickleback discovers Theory of A Dead Man, and together they wreak havoc on innocent ear drums.

I’ll be blatantly honest, when I say that it was in this vein that I wrote of Burlington Ontario’s own, Silverstien discovered, Dead and Divine. In my own defense, their debut full length, 2008’s The Fanciful did manage to miss the mark by a few feet, but they came roaring back a year latter and redeemed themselves with the release of The Machines We Are.

Machines finds a young band, who with the help of veteran producer Garth Richardson (Rise Against – Siren Songs of the Counter Culture, Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against The Machine) and Eric Ratz, have managed to hone their sound, and craft an incredible album that is leaps and bounds above their previous work.

Vocalist Matt Tobin, finds his voice on this album, perfect the balance between the growl and the singing, while the rest of the band, guitarists Chris LeMasters and Sebastian Leuth, bassist Kellan Lindsay and drummer Kyle Anderson, have all followed suit and put together a tight and dirty (two words you rarely see together) collection of songs.
Creature sways back and force between the power of the howl and the soaring vocals, crafting a song that is at once powerful and passionate, and has some using the frightening word “grammy” in reference to it.

Tracks like Lovely Bones, Teeth and Neon Jesus, show what an incredible band Dead and Divine have become, and what an incredible album The Machines We Are is. I could gush more, but I won’t do it the justice that listening to this album will, so go find it, listen to it, and enjoy this post-hardcore opus of awesomeness.

Dead and Divine – Creature
Dead and Divine – Lovely Bones
Dead and Divine – Neon Jesus

The Town of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina is about an hour north east of Greensboro, and is best known as the real town which served as the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show. It is from this picturesque setting that Christian Hardcore act A Kiss For Jersey found their passion for music and honed their sound.

A Kiss For Jersey, combine charging riffs with an at odds combination of both soaring and screaming vocals to create a well polished sound, that recalls early Underoath, with better vocals, as lead singer Zach Dawson’s voice is more akin to the soaring wails of The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zaval than the high pitched nasal shrills of Aaron Gillespie that dot Underoath’s earlier albums.

On Victims, AKFJ’s follow up to 2006’s Keep Your Head Above Water, which was re-issued in 2008, Dawson, along with guitarists Matt Bean, and Cory Wood, bassist Tyler Lucas and drummer Joey Allan, put their musicianship on display, as they continuously lull the listener into, for lack of a better crack at their religious side, a stat of grace, before hitting their bitch switch and pounding you into the ground with a curdling scream and wailing guitars.

As for their religious side, which they proudly wear on their shoulders the way most bands wear a tattered heart, AKFJ, make no bones about what they believe. The band themselves state that, “One of the main focuses for A Kiss For Jersey is to be able to share their faith in Jesus Christ and his love and forgiveness.”

Their faith is evident in their music as well. The sixth track on Victims, A Tree and It’s Fruit, is just a straight up scripture reading, with some atmospheric guitars and drums, provoking the image of a barren wasteland with but one tree stretching out of the ground towards a bloody sky.

Dawson and Co spare no chance to lay on the Christ in their lyrics. Oh, Infamous City, breaks down into a bombastic Psalm with a call and answer you won’t likely find in an actual church.

Taken away from all we are
Now the walls we shake my God
Faith work your way down every heart
The more we face my God

While Salus Suas Extanderealas Concedit, finds a man both pleading with and accepting God in the face of the death of a loved one, while The Flood, evokes Old Testament Style images of the total destruction.

There is no doubting their faith or their talent, as AKFJ have crafted a solid album, complete with time changes, awesome riffs, soaring vocals, wailing screams and modern genuflecting that will keep you on your knees, whether you’re an alter boy, or someone who wouldn’t be caught dead alone with a priest.

All Jesus aside, A Kiss For Jersey cram a truck load of musical talent into Victims, and it won’t be long till they get noticed and replace Opie and Aunt Bee as the most popular thing to come out of Pilot Mountain.

A Kiss For Jersey – Oh, Infamous City
A Kiss For Jersey – Salus Suas Extanderealas Concedit

I’d given up on the interview and decided to just kill some time before the start of the show. The battery in my blackberry was dead, I hadn’t eaten, and the interview had never materialized. I was pulling into a Wendy’s to grab something before the show, when miraculously, my once dead phone vibrated and it was an e-mail from Richard, saying that I could still get my interview.

I gunned it out of the parking lot and almost side swiped a delivery truck as I swerved into traffic and pointed the nose of my car back towards the Opera House. Traffic was light and I made it there quickly. Jumping out and telling my buddy to park the car for me, I half ran, half slid across Queen street and knocked on the door to the giant bus sitting outside.

I’d like to be able to describe down to the finest detail of the tour bus, but I honestly didn’t notice anything as Richard led me into the back room and introduced me to Matt Davies and Darren Smith.
(more…)

Hailing from Irvine California, new millennium post-hardcore mainstays Thrice, have created a catalog of music ranging from fast riff driven rock to melodic art rock, all without missing a beat. It’s that catalog that they put on display in their latest live double disc release. Recorded live in Anaheim at the House Of Blues, while on tour with Pelican and Circa Survive, Thrice rock their way through a set comprised mostly of songs off their latest release, the four EP set The Alchemy Index, while mixing in the older material that any Thrice fan will eat up .

Thrice, comprised of lead singer Dustin Kensrue, guitarist Teppei Teranishi, and brothers Eddie, and Riley Breckenridge rounding out the rhythm section on bass and drums respectively formed in 1998 released their first album, Identity Crisis in 2001. Cirsis was pure energy and laid the foundation for their first real success with the release of 2002’s The Illusion of Safety, which found the band delivering a heavy dose of fast, hardcore riffs. Thrice refined this formula with great success on 2003’s The Artist In The Ambulance, which saw the band move to another level of musicianship, incorporating more intense guitars, and more complex time signatures. Thrice moved in a different direction with their next release 2005’s Vheissu, which saw the band incorporate a large variety of instruments including strings and piano. Teppei revealed in an interview previous to Vheissu’s release that this had been the first album which Thrice wrote mainly on the piano, leading to an obvious difference between the new songs and the bands older, guitar driven material. Thrice took their new style to the next level on their four EP release The Alchemy Index. Each EP in the set was based around one of the four elements, Earth, Fire, Wind and Water, and each had a unique style ranging from the acoustic style of Earth to the tech heavy Minus The Bear/No Knife style found on Water, represented by songs like Digital Sea and Open Water.

Thrice starts the set out with The Lion and the Wolf off of the Earth EP, and then continue with two more songs from the Alchemy Index with the harder Firebrether and The Messanger from Fire kicking it up a notch. They visit Vheissu for Dust and Nations before showing off their newer style with an incredible version of the Kid A-esque Digital Sea. The almost home town crowd add a great element to Digital Sea and the rest of the album. Thrice then comes back with Flags of Dawn, found only on the Red Sky EP released in 2006. A few more songs from the Alchemy Index are up next with the charging Burn The Fleet, the haunting Open Water, and then Thrice’s cover of 90’s DC post hardcore alum Frodus’ The Earth Isn’t Humming. The old hits come out then as Thrice reaches back to The Artist In The Ambulance for the title track, that has the entire audience singing every word along with Kensrue, and then reaching all the way back to Illusion of Safety to play the now classic Trust before turning up the energy one more time with Artists’ first track, Cold Cash and Colder Hearts to close out Disc One.

Disc two continues the pattern of newer tracks with Broken Lungs and The Whaler before once again going back to Artist for All That’s Left and Silhouette. The acoustic Come All You Weary is reminiscent of Kensrue’s solo efforts and showcases his gravelly but beautiful voice and incredible lyrical sensibility. Artists second single, as chosen by the label and not the band, Stare at the Sun whipped the crowd into a frenzy before breaking into the moving Daedalus, which is almost a sequel to one of Artist’s most impressive songs The Melting Point of Wax, as they both recount the story of Icarus. Wax from Icarus’s point of view and Daedalus from the point of view of his father who had to watch as his son fly’s too close to the sun and then plunges into the sea. Two more fast paced hardcore songs, Don’t Tell And We Won’t Ask and Hold Hope Fast lead into Vheissu’s melodic one-two punch of For Miles and the first encore song of the night Red Sky. As any encore should, Thrice thanks the fans with possibly their best song Deadbolt from Illusion and then end the show off with the chant along Image of the Invisible.

So what makes Live At The House Of Blues worth owning? First off, any true Thrice fan is going to want everything they release, and this is by far the highest production value of any live release they have in their catalogue. Where songs like For Miles and Red Sky already got the live treatment on the Red Sky EP, the newer material stands out as a showcase for those who thought that Thrice peaked with Artist and the older material show that they still rock harder and better than most bands who are still in their early stages. Thrice is a band who defined post-hardcore for a whole generation, and they continue to re-define themselves with each and every release. Live At The House Of Blues is an example of a live disc that works, and will please current fans, win back past fans and bring new Thrice lovers into the fold.

Aaron Long

Thrice – Live at the House of Blues – Come All You Weary

Thrice – Live at the House of Blues – The Artist in the Ambulance.mp3

Thrice – Live at the House of Blues – Digital Sea

Flash forward and it’s late in 2008, November 28th, to be precise, when The Fall Of Troy, Erak, drummer Andrew Forsman and new bassist/singer Frank Black, have just released a truly limited edition EP, Phantom On The Horizon. The band has only printed 3 000 hard copies of the disc which is exclusive to their own online store and the merch table of their current headlining tour.

Phantom on the Horizon is a re-recording of a series of demo’s that leaked onto the internet four years ago and had already found their way onto the iPod’s of all of The Fall Of Troy’s fans. Produced by Casey Bates, Phantom On The Horizon is described as one song separated into chapters, and it flows like a 32 minute song, with all of the signature Fall Of Troy screaming, thrashing guitars, and more time changes from Forsman than you can shake a really big stick at. The main difference comes in Erak’s decision to no longer limit his vocals to the shrieking and screaming variety, but to take is vocal chords out for a walk and see what they can do. There are moments where, as a friend of mine put it, Erak sounds like a rejected contestant from American Idol. And while Erak’s crooning ability doesn’t match up with the likes of Anthony Green or Craig Owens, he manages to hold his own and create some powerful contrast between his high pitched scream, and his more melodic singing.

Phantom also finds itself with several moments of quiet reflection, a rarity on most Fall Of Troy albums where the band slow everything down, and lull you into a false sense of security before they speed everything up again to a frenetic pace, and hit you over the head with their untouchable musicianship.

Phantom on the Horizon is an album that sucks you in, swishes you around and spits you back out again, but still leaves you reaching for the dial on your pod, to start the whole ride over again, and to crank the volume. The Fall Of Troy continue to hone their sound and their craft, and Phantom is an incredible ride that points at a band that’s only getting better.

The Fall Of Troy – Chapter V – The Walls Bled Lust
The Fall OF Troy – Chapter III – Nostalgic Mannerisims
The Fall Of Troy – Chapter I – Introverting Dimensions

- Aaron Long

Earlier this year, post-hardcore experimental rockers These Arms Are Snakes released their newest installment to their discography, Tail, Swallower, and Dove . While in the past, most of the excitement has centered around building to a climax of chaos, the new album focuses a little more on trying out new sounds, ambitious rhythms, and mesmerizing textures.

In other words, rather than taking a path that led to explosive climaxes armed with brainbending guitar and bass riffs, the new album is a little more akin to something from The Jesus Lizard. In a way this is a good thing, since it makes the listener feel more like they’re experiencing an album, rather than listening to a high fidelity recording of a live performance. If there is one thing Tail, Swallower, and Dove is in no shortage of, it’s groove. From the first track of the record (which might just be the best Jesus Lizard song never written), the songs instantly immerse the listener in a driving (often non-changing) beat. In many ways, the album is a sequel to the epic Easter, the lyrics are still cryptic, the bass and guitar seem to be in constant role reversal with each other, the intensity is there, and every song unquestionably is backed by the band’s signature ambient vibe. The mood on this album however is darker than usual, more sinister, and at times it doesn’t even sound like the band is playing in a small room, as opposed to an auditorium…or castle.

The band makes heavy use of the pump organ and microKORG throughout the album, and throws creative noises and effects in every inch of every song. While most bands will use effects as a brief moment of excitement or interesting way to introduce a part of a song, These Arms Are Snakes will actually make a riff out of it and build the entire song around it. Perhaps there is no better example than the super compressed synth bass that opens Lucifer, mixed higher than any part of the song, carrying throughout. Just another example of a bass riff by Brian Cook that would even make Chris Wolstenholme (Muse) jealous.

Though the album feels somewhat transitional, it is a more mature effort from a band making great strides in the world of post-hardcore and rock music in general. It will be exciting to see where it takes the band in the future.

3.5/5

Red Line Season by These Arms Are Snakes

Woolen Hearts by These Arms Are Snakes