Being around longer than a good number of bands shoving their way through the scene now-a-days, these guys know a thing or two about solid music. “Lies” is a track boasting a pure infectious hook, slathered together with solid instrumentation courtesy of the whole band. What I love about this song is its depth wrapped in such a simple package. What I mean is that although it contains the simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge structure, the transitions are what make it flow. There are little breaks of short instrumentation here and there to stop choppy transitions. Nick Moore is a shining beacon here, because the line “I know you’re dying inside/the things that you hide/won’t let you rest at night/when you’re full of lies” in the chorus is as catchy as the common cold. There’s a pleasant balance of screams and cleans, and it never feels overpowering.

I like the controlled chaos approach that this band takes to their heavy parts, because they never take the inch and push it to a mile. There’s enough original instrumentation in the background to separate itself from other “chug-chug” styles of post-hardcore, but it could always go further. It doesn’t stray too far from previous material, so old fans will likely dig this track. I’m definitely hoping for more instrumentation and creative expression further down the road. Otherwise, this is a great start and I’ve got my fingers crossed for smooth sailing here on out.

I’ve had my doubts because of the success of The Dawn of My Death and Before Their Eyes, but I can say based off of this song that their upcoming release Redemption should be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a well-deserved return.

What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments section below!

The track mirrors sounds from all of their previous releases, while simultaneously managing to create an entirely new atmosphere for the band to explore. For a band that’s been through numerous member changes, it’s extraordinary to me that they can still release consistent music that isn’t stale or clichéd.

The song begins with a piano that would fit anywhere on Symphonies before erupting into a full instrumental assault. The vocals are a little overwhelming at times, but Scott Barnes has developed such an incredible voice, you can forgive a little thing like that. The musicianship, as always, is top notch; Ramin Niroomand continues to develop and clearly show his already excellent range as a writer, implementing both chaotic guitars and melodic, sensual pianos into the mix.

Once again, In Fear And Faith give us reason to be excited (or at least me; I have been called an IFAF fan boy once or twice). “It All Comes Out (On The Way Down)” is exactly where they should be at this point in their musical careers. The years and years of developing and evolving to stay afloat and relevant seem to have finally culminated, boosting the band not only into a state where they’re one of the best heavy bands on their label, but one of the best bands around.

You can listen to “It All Comes Out (On The Way Down)” here and/or buy it here.

Pianos’ ambiance-laced post-hardcore takes a steady step forward on The Lack Long After, showing growth without leaving behind what made them stand out of the pack with Old Pride. “I’ll Be Damned” is a beast of an opener, as colossal guitars ring out above the maniacal drumming, leaving the wall of sound to later transform into a sparse, yet brooding spotlight for vocalist Kyle Durfey’s gritty, passion-filled growls. This ending paves the way for “Good Times,” giving us drawn out guitar hits and scattered drumming – an ending slightly too familiar to keep these tracks as separate as they should be. In its own sense, “Good Times” is the product of mid-tempo angst and the band’s leanings toward post-rock and nearly mountainous arrangements; it just loses a bit of its starting tension when the track before it ends in a similar way that this one begins. “Such Confidence” carries the slow-jam torch well though, giving us simple, tension-filled guitar lines to build up into a blitzkrieg of drums and screams when the guitars go into high gear. There’s no clear leader on the track though, as the driver’s seat seems to flow from one instrument to the other with no pauses or letups, culminating in a manic bridge that sets up the cathartic release.

Yet rather than go for the jugular after such a drawn out tune, “Liquid Courage” takes the role of Old Pride’s “Cripples Can’t Shiver,” albeit without the emotional tug of a spoken word spot to pull at the heartstrings. With somber strums and thundering drums to back him, Durfey’s slightly distanced screams seep with emotion and a sense of urgency. The transition into “Spine” lunges us from a near crawl to a bullet barrage of drumming – a much more natural and understandable shift between tracks. The ending half of this eight track record is the bread and butter of The Lack Long After. There’s no seams or missed connections between the vicious outpourings of furious drumming and the often engulfing wall-of-guitar sound.

Ending on an ascent and conquering of a peak, “I’ll Get By” boasts bright post-rock melodies and a slightly less abrasive vocal approach from Durfey, who’s battling with his inner demons. The pleading line ‘But I couldn’t save you, I couldn’t save what was taken away / And I’m still singing, you still can’t stay’ hits hard despite being camouflaged by lush guitars and laid-back beats. In the massive closing passage, the band gives everything and makes one more desperate grasp at the heart, capping the album with an unresolved sense of agony that is difficult to swallow as the last bits of sound decay behind the sound bite of ‘You know how much he loved you.’

On first listen, this album is a jarring, often abrasive record that for some can be difficult to truly get into. But for those willing to delve into its tumultuous songwriting and screaming, Pianos Become the Teeth’s second album is an emotion-wringing journey of loss and struggle that proves this band is not just embodying some old ghost of screamo and post-hardcore past. The Lack Long After is an album you will be moved by.

The first song, “Murder I Wrote,” is clear evidence right away. The indecipherable rawr rawr’s are quite funny, the high screeches are borderline good, but the singing is purely awesome. It’s got some brutal deathcore breakdowns, but with weak deathcore verses that lead into a complete 180 with the post-hardcore chorus. At another point they combine the clean and low screaming over music that blends both styles.

Having never heard this band before, that post-hardcore influence threw me for a loop. The track has a bit of a classic The Acacia Strain feel to it in the beginning. Throwing heavy drop D breakdowns and linking with heavy metalcore verses provide the stage for an epic singing chorus that stands out on its own among other post-hardcore bands of today.

Easily the best musical section of the album is on the song “Delusions.” It builds off of a really soft and mellow guitar playing with subtle drums, then some of the best brutal breakdowns I’ve heard all year. Bass heavy is how I like it. These guys may get crap for not being more exploratory in the guitar playing, but in this case minimizing it can be a good thing. At the 3:55 mark, they bring the pain to the pit with menacing vocals coupled with the same breakdowns as before. Could have done without the low singing going out on an electronic style as they’re very cliché, but it’s forgivable. The actual singing is very mellow and calming, which again seems out of place.

For essentially a straight post-hardcore track, check out “Heroes Of June.” It starts with a soft background-placed guitar, then high-pitched guitars over standard screaming sets you up for the singing parts. Though at this point I started to notice that as soon as they end the singing, the brutal deathcore lows kick in without the mid-range screaming. They try to use this shock value over and over but after a while you start to notice it.

Then “Famous Last Words” bitch-slaps you with a metalcore sound that is largely missing from the rest of the album along with heart-stopping breakdowns. They use a more ominous post-hardcore type of music in the chorus with no clean singing at all, until the 2:15 mark. To give the listener a break from this tired shock value, I think they should have left it as a regular deathcore song.

I can’t really say too much about the deathcore sections, other than they’re mostly generic while throwing in something new every once in a while. This is admirable however, because it proves that if you think you can’t stand out in one genre, then combine a few and create something no one has heard before. If anyone is aware of more deathcore/post-hardcore bands, let me know cause I’ve never heard of this.

No stone or sound goes unturned on Conversation Piece. The appeal of the album ranges from “The Wave” to Warped Tour, Mathcore to Metal, and Prog to…prog. Repeated listens should conjure thoughts of everyone from Touche Amore and La Dispute to Explosions In The Sky and Closure In Moscow, yet packaging the sounds in a way that’s new and refreshing. Few albums can stretch genre-boundaries without alienating audiences, yet A Lot Like Birds breezes through the task.

All you Kurt apostles will be pleased, as the man is at his best here. Every line he croons on Conversation Piece displays the anxious enthusiasm from his DGD debut with the free-flowing maturity of Happiness, all while hitting the strongest notes of his career. Despite great chorus contributions on alternating vocal tracks like “Orange Time Machines Care” and “Sesame Street Is No Place For Me,” his most mesmerizing moments are when the band yanks the reigns and gets sexy, like in “The Blowtorch is Applied to the Sugar” and the gorgeous “A Satire of a Satire of a Satire is Tiring.”

You’ll come for Travis, but you’ll leave with Cory Lockwood. In a scene where most screamers utter indecipherable angry bullshit, Lockwood displays several unique vocal approaches that all entertain. Sometimes he’ll tear you to shreds (see: “Think Dirty Out Loud“), while other times he’s taking a more Jordan Dreyer approach to things, opting for spoken word on the latter half of “Properties of Friction.” No matter what he’s sending through the mic, though, Lockwood’s performance (and afro) are sure to win over legions of fans.

Enough about the vocals though; the musicianship and composition behind A Lot Like Birds are the foundation of the band’s greatness. As I said before, the guitar playing of Michael Franzino and Ben Wiacek is more eclectic, complex and creative than the rest of the scene combined; that opening lead to “Vanity’s Fair” following the trumpets (yeah, you read right. Trumpets.) begs you to raise your fret fingers and play along. Joe Arrington’s beastly beats deserve recognition of their own, hitting with the ferocity of Underoath‘s Daniel Davison and the technicality of Saosin‘s Alex Rodriguez. Make sure to check the mastered version of leaked demo “Tantrum (Far From The Tree, The Apple Grew Rotten)” to witness the mastery of the ALLB’s rhythm section.

Like a finely-tuned machine, Conversation Piece is a record greater than the sum of its parts, even with the six talented members behind it. It’s absurd to think that this line-up has worked together less than a year, creating an album experienced bands dream of making. With their debut full-length, A Lot Like Birds have become one of post-hardcore’s most important new bands and one of the few capable of saving the scene.

You’ve all been so patiently waiting to see what we had coming from Orange County’s Pacifica. The band (a healthy mixture of Translating The Name-era Saosin and newer Circa Survive) and MindEqualsBlown.net are proud to release the new music video for their single, “Trading Sleep.” Check it out below!
To get “Trading Sleep” and the rest of their EP, The Process Of Illumination, head over to their official website for a FREE DOWNLOAD.

Without further adieu, here’s “Trading Sleep.”

MEB staffer Shaun Tan recently caught up with Alesana vocalists Shawn Milke and Dennis Lee, where they spoke about the new record, Dante’s Inferno and band’s they’d like to tour with.

The most marked growth for La Dispute lies within the musical palate we hear on Wildlife. Somewhere found the band embracing their At The Drive In meets mewithoutYou pigeonholing, and while it was not bad by any means whatsoever, it left little room for variation in the catalog. Wildlife instead hears the band moving outwards from that sound, as tracks like “Harder Harmonies” and “Edward Benz, 27 Times” don’t sound far from the structures and sounds we are used to, with the former sounding like it could easily fit right in with any of the band’s previous works. Yet, the writing on Wildlife seems focused on creating buzz-filled jam-like foundations for Jordan Dreyer’s shout-sing vocal attack. “St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church Blues” relies on a cleaner guitar tone and bombastic drumming that while not as brash as the rest is just as easy to head-bob along to. Where Somewhere was often slathered in melody, “St. Paul”, like many of the more moving sections of Wildlife, drowns us in a sea of guitar strums, providing a sullen foundation for the words and smarter placed melodies we will hear. “Edit Your Hometown” and “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” find the band wading into upbeat territories of power-chorded fury, while “Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan” brings us a catchy, yet somber melody in its mid-tempo buildup of drums and frantic lyricism. Though not a completely different sound for the band, they show a metamorphosis into musicians capable of shedding their abrasive tendencies for melodies and arrangements much more fitting for the emotions their music and lyrics bring.

That isn’t to say the band has dropped their melodic tendencies with Wildlife. Reflective of the discovering nature of the lyrics, the melodies here are filled with an often somber wonderment. “I See Everything” harnesses the band’s more abrasive tendencies but with smarter melodies that drive the musical end of things forward as the track develops into a story of hope through loss. The production of the record, which was done with no artificial reverb, wonderfully captures the emotion and tensions this record brings forward, as tracks like “Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan” and “all our bruised bodies and the whole heart shrinks” benefit from lush, yet simple guitar lines and sharp drumming – undoubtedly enhanced by the work done by Andrew Everding and Joe Pedulla to capture this record in honest fashion.

As for Dreyer and his synonymous vocal delivery, his lyricism here is nearly flawless – though his delivery is as unchanged as it could be. Ripe with emotion and lined with the slightest bit of gruff, his stories on Wildlife bring a range of emotions – loss, distance and uncertainty to name a few. Though the premise of Wildlife is a collection of stories with notes from the author, these writings in their delivery and poetic nature feel real – and are often unsettling and woven with self-defining questioning. “King Park” recollects the death of a child through Dreyer’s eyes as a ghost, describing the aftermath as the killer pleads ‘Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?’, while “I See Everything” tells the story of a child who dies from cancer and how a family tries to cope with the death while keeping their faith in God and saying ‘Though I’ve felt nowhere what you have, I see nothing at all.’ “Edward Benz, 27 Times” might be the most heart-tugging of the bunch, as the line ‘When you walked through the door, did you think you’d show me your scars?’ reveals a story of a father whose mentally-ill son nearly kills him. Though certainly not as relatable as the subject matters presented in prior writings, Dreyer’s words are not deplete of emotion or passion by any means.

Not everything is quite as heavy though, with “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” contemplating self-discovery and connection and “Edit Your Hometown” hearing Dreyer fret over the dissipation of prior friendships via geographical relocation. Record ending pair “all our bruised bodies and the whole heart shrinks” and “You and I in Unison” bring the record full-circle in an ever-questioning fashion. The former finds an outpouring of questions and pleadings, with Dreyer admitting to not being ready to face all of the trials and tribulations (‘I’m not sure yet if I’m ready to find out the hard way’) while musically the track brings tension through crunching guitar lines and downing melodies. “You and I” finalizes our time with the storyteller, as Dreyer touches back on his previous entries, pleading ‘Everybody needs someone or something’ as the hopeful melodies and guitars eventually fade to a sparse guitar line that ends the record in an emotionally draining fashion. In any case, Wildlife is lyrically, and for any case musically, unsettling and draining, hitting your heart like jackhammer through Dreyer’s poetic spouting.

In what in one of the post-hardcore world’s most anticipated releases, La Dispute rises to the challenge of following up a beloved album with musical growth and expanded emotion in a record that captures the journey of young adulthood with unapologetic purpose in a search for resolve. Wildlife is a sure-footed step forward for La Dispute – a band full of passion and creativity that have once again captured the feelings of hope and loss with impressive musical execution.

Why? I don’t know. But the response will inevitably be: why not?

Anyway, the 7”, I’m Going Through Some Shit b/w All Fruit is Ripe is full of serious and comedic lyrics by singer Pat Kindlon that are reminiscent of early ‘90s D.C. post-hardcore bands. The fascination with that runs deeper too. As you can see, End of a Year/Self Defense Family is going through a name change to be just Self Defense Family soon. By completely dropping the Embrace song title from their name, it does bring out that transitional phase of hardcore into a slower, darker, and more thoughtful time (aka better music quality and less moshing).

Side A of “I’m Going Through Some Shit” is musically manic, yet it totally works. It’s 13 Songs riff is post-hardcore but by all counts it’s also Jamaican reggae.  A valid point can be raised that Bad Brains did work like this, but Self Defense Family isn’t nearly as aggressive. However, the lyrics are as Kindlon croons: “I scored an ‘F’ on standardized test/ I boarded a plane for Los Angles/ Mid-flight I received your text: Good luck, son, I hope you crash.” That would even make fellow Albany author William Kennedy laugh, as there must be a way to get out of SmAlbany after all.

Then Side B of “All Fruit is Ripe” is faster but just as nasty (“Lord give Patrick some rest/ Paint job looks smart but inside’s a mess”). There’s still time to just rock though, with a longer instrumental end that emphasizes the clearly-recorded drums.

The five-piece has famously called their splits and EPs “one night stands.” If that’s the case with I’m Going Through Some Shit b/w All Fruit is Ripe, then it also oddly turned out well. The Jamaican sound of post-hardcore and hardcore could have been left in the past or utterly to ska. Even the best music critics couldn’t have guessed it would reappear. But there are no guidelines to music because that book of no-no’s was left to rot in the trash. So…why not?

We’re happy to have teamed up with Rock The Walls and Indianola Records to bring you an exclusive song premiere from Oh, Manhattan.

Earlier this week, we broke the news that Oh, Manhattan vocalist, Hance Alligood, had left the band to pursue the vacant vocalist position in Woe, Is Me. Regardless of the loss of Alligood, we at Mind Equals Blown still believe that Oh, Manhattan’s upcoming album Spiritual Warfare is worth checking out.

We’re proud to present “Mercury In The Water” off of Spiritual Warfare, which drops September 27th on Indianola Records.

Oh, Manhattan – Mercury In The Water by mindequalsblown