Baller opening to the opening track and cool riffs all around but I really dislike how vocals sit in the mix. The lyrics being bad are a little overblown by what seems to be common reception, but I do think where the vocals are sitting on top of the mix really flatten most of these songs. I struggle to look past this kind of thing with all music where I think the vocals have ended up in the wrong spot. I am interested in the kind of drama pulled from spoken word that this band is going for but I like it more in the early La Dispute releases or Circle Takes the Square.
I think there's some sauce here that a lot of bands biting this kind of screamo rn are missing but I honestly find this specific release a little unremarkable or overly clean. The somber low end dominates the riffier high end. It is a very method of sounding heavier that I understand but don't really like that much. These are all songs I would enthusiastically bang my head to live instead of doing so politely.
You're kind of cheating by including two albums here :p. This is immediately a much more energetic release. The low end still dominates here, but now it is very exciting when the high end pokes through. The approach is really similar to Dark Mountain with the the really oppressive low end, but there's like a loud-low end, an even quieter high end thing, and a mix between the two going on here instead of just the quiet/loud thing that made Dark Mountain a little boring to me. All the songwriting goals of Dark Mountain feel more refined here because of that. The 7inch-ness of this release is really obvious in a good way. Tracks 1-5 could be their own release. Track 6 by itself is a a really impressive cap on the A-side. It's much more chaotic than the rest of that side and it's mostly high end most of the time, but it achieves the same kind of dreadful crawling sensation achieved by the more oppressive parts low-end parts. I think the last track is not super strong and the gang vocals ending is a little corny to me. I think if the A and B sides were flipped the release would be a lot stronger, but it's not a huge weakness to me because it's a very cool album. I'm angry I've somehow skipped this part of their discography for this long!! RYM seems to place these two as their worst albums lol.
This one is really hard to listen to because of how many bands pull directly from this album without the right ferocity or brevity. The way the A-side is so unrelenting after the first track where the B-side is disjointed but with a lot more repetition to latch onto is really compelling. The Freudian interview on the first track and the radio chatter on track 9 kind of suck? I get that doing noise interludes wasn't everywhere yet, but on track 9 in particular it ruins what I think would otherwise be the most interesting song on the release for me. It feels a little insane to say but I don't think this kind of music is for me anymore so I think I'm no longer fit to speak to what this album does well. The dynamism and chaos of the release is really profound but I am looking for more of a developed and clear idea in music than pure brutality directed at the listener and the band.
I've been so transfixed by the iwrotehaikus discography for the last decade of my life that I never thought to see if any of them had made more music lmaooo. Sean Leary of Loma Prieta has way more presence than Trei does but I think the two meet halfway really well. The normal Loma-y quiet-loud buildup shit has fun, bright, and punchy riffs as the payoff instead of the comparatively reserved high end riffs on Life/Less. Whatever is going on with the bass is really unremarkable though and whatever is happening on the low end doesn't complement the high end when it is leading the song. This is a cool release that I want to spend more time with, thought I do wish it was longer or that there was more from this band. I think there's a lot more to develop with the writing styles of Sean and Trei and I'm bummed they didn't make more!
Lately, the haikus discography feels the strongest conetender for my favorite album ever. I walk away from a lot of hardcore and screamo lately because of how narrow the range of emotion is. This band is really succesful at making a container for a more realistically diverse range feelings and emotions. They manage all the chaos of the wall of sound type emoviolence with a much simpler approach to tone and mix. It takes in the simplicity and folk music-like qualities of hardcore by keeping riffs brief and catchy. The bass gets to drive tracks in an unbelievably groovy and pop-y way that I think is a development on hardcore that screamo mostly ignores. The whole discography manages to loop back around to conventional song composition while still working with the chaotic sounds of the genre. It's an approach to of song writing that bands still struggle to do without stepping to heavily into post-hardcore or lo-fi/bedroom screamo. Tracks ultimately feel monumental, belonging to a time and place conjured in front of you. untitled 10 has quietly taken over 5 as my favorite track in the discography because it does this play with time and narrative so clearly: having an insane emotional moment, being greeted by and even cheered on by your friends or loved ones, and having to hold both of those feelings at the same time.