For Your Health : "This Bitter Garden"

 

This band plays an angular, dissonant style of noisy screamo. The guitar tones are organic without the processed distortion of the dense metal sound, and the screamed vocals add to the chaos of the songs. The vocals are sometimes more layered than others, with a more sung punk in the background. The first two songs run together, meaning that even in the swirling class of guitars that is their sound, there is a certain uniformity to their sound. "With Empty Promises and Loaded Guns" they are still attacking from a similar sonic place, though backing off of it to allow the song more room to breathe and atmosphere to develop to create the dynamics to explode out of.  You can hear them coming from the more emo side of the screamo equation here. 

This is the band's second album, so they know what they are doing here. Then they pick up the pace for "Gaia Wept," which does not favor their songwriting. Sure, there is a cool riff that comes in here, but the rule here is "cool riffs does not a good song make".  'Clementine' crosses over into the more pop punk side of emo, but it's tense, melodic, and brooding, which works for me. They throw themselves in a grindcore-like frenzy with "The Radiant Apostasy." They rein themselves in for the song's more melodic ending. "Heaven Here" is not the first use of a piano on this album, but the instrument is most dominant in this moment. It feels more like an interlude than a song, but at over three minutes, it is longer than many of the album's songs. 

"Longinus' finds them back in the jarring mode of screamo that feels like their true persona. I do like that they are willing to take you on a sonic adventure and color things with different sounds. More often than not, their experimentation works. They do find a few melodies for 'The Rotting Pair," though the mood is emotionally confrontational more often than not. "In the Valley of Weeping" opens with a wrathful racing pulse then ebbs into more melodic speculation. I think these more melodic part are the area they should grow into, though not sacrificing a great deal of their spastic edge. 

"Lamb Without Fold' leans more in the direction of more rabid screaming. "Your New Curse" also follows a similar direction. "Hostel Elysia" finds them at the crossroads where emo met with what would be now known as post-rock, so a more ambient form of introspective indie rock. Shimmering guitar containing the screaming is their best choice for dynamic contrasts. I'll give this album an 8.5 .  I am sure it will get some hype and coverage by members of the press prone to celebrate a band that uses pronouns, but when it comes to music with identity politics aside, they are good at what they are doing here, it's a fun album that proves screamo still has life left in it. This drops on 3DOT Recordings June 6th.

 

pst196