I'm going to talk some more about my time in Austin pretty soon, but I need some time to recharge and collect my thoughts. I don't know if its all the running or not, but I've been pretty tired recently despite getting an extremely decent amount of sleep last night. I know I at least have the next two days off so I'll have some time to just relax and write.
I've been listening to three albums a lot lately, all of which are pretty damn good. Two are by bands I have no previous experience with and the third by a group I've been following for some time now. The first two were discovered via r/postrock, a subreddit I subscribed to recently. They are Cognoscere by North End, a cacophonous instrumental math-rock outfit that reminds me a lot of Toe, but with all the melancholy drained and replaced by joy; and Heights by Damascus, another instrumental group with a bit more dynamic range. I think they must be relatively little-known because I downloaded their albums from Bandcamp and paid $2 apiece for them. Still, both albums are surprisingly good.
Cognoscere is really catchy and listenable for an album described as post-rock. There isn't much in the way of slow buildups and dramatic crescendos, although rhythmically it's incredibly varied. Like Toe, a lot of emphasis is put on percussion, but in this case it isn't at the expense of the guitarwork, which is responsible for a lot of frenetic riffing and loud rhythms. The album is short but sweet, which I find is a really admirable trait in modern music. I enjoy being able to listen through an album without being exhausted by it, which is so often the case in this genre in particular.
Heights is a bit of a different beast; it's definitely more on the metal end of the spectrum but at the same time its much more of a classic example of post-rock. There are buildups and there are releases, like in the first track, which opens with a plaintive piano melody before giving way to drums and pretty guitar melodies. There is that sense of moving forward as more layers and melodies are added into the mix. It coalesces into a lovely cheerful track until progressing into big distorted guitars, busy drum fills and chaotic leads. The rest of the track and the album continues to ebb and flow, like most examples of the genre. I find it difficult to describe in a satisfying way because you could apply these descriptors to pretty much any post-rock/metal album... but Heights stands out from a lot of other releases I've heard by being memorable, and how do you quantify memorability?
The third album is The Flood Inside by Long Distance Calling, their fourth release since 2007. I've been listening to this band since Avoid the Light came out in 2009 and I really dig them. They stand out to me because they have a lot of really excellent riffs and they're not afraid to rock out. Some groups in this genre will lose my attention with atmospheric noodling, but Long Distance Calling never goes that route. While their tracks tend to be quite long, they also tend to be loud, melodic, and fun to listen to. They've also featured vocals intermittently over the years. "The Nearing Grave," featuring Jonas Renske of Katatonia, is one of my favorites of theirs.
The Flood Inside is their first release to feature a full-time vocalist. He's no one notable as far as I know, though he's evidently a member of a few German bands I'd never heard of. His vocals feature on three of the album's nine tracks (of which four have vocals), so it's not a huge paradigm shift for the band by any means. His vocal performance is growing on me as I give the album more listens. I was initially unimpressed and dismissed him as a generic traditional metal vocalist, but I think I was probably wrong. I'm still not convinced the tracks he contributes to were necessary candidates for vocals, but he did a serviceable job.
The track that really sticks out for me is "Welcome Change," which features a guest vocalist who my research has revealed to be... Petter Carlsen? I was almost positive that was a female singer, but hey, I've been wrong before. Regardless of the vocalist's gender, the track stands out as the most memorable and melodic track on the album. Overall, I think I still prefer Avoid the Light as an album, but it's probably better than 2011's self-titled, which featured a track rendered unlistenable by its awful grungy vocalist. (Turns out he was one of the many frontmen for Anthrax. Go figure.)
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