Senses Fail just put the cap on a terrific 2015! they reunited as a band, put out a cool new album Pull The Thorns From Your Heart (Pure Noise Records) and headlined The Warped Tour. When you do all that, what do you do for an encore? Go out and slay venues all over the world of course! The band spent the last half of the fall co-headlining with another seminal post-hardcore/screamo band, Silverstein. Each band has had a similar career trajectory and much in common (huge followings, Warped Tour alums) so touring together made sense. Bringing along hardcore heads like Hundredth and Capsize(not pictured) this was a slick bill that played to many full houses with tons of passionate fans moshing, screaming a long, and having a ball. Meg Loyal of Meg Loyal Photography caught the tour at one of Ghost Cult’s favorite venues, The Worcester Palladium. Keep going out there and supporting these bands in 2016 and you might just be rewarded when your favorite band reunites and comes to your town for a show!
The Usedhave released the teaser trailer for their forthcoming live album Live And Acoustic At The Palace, due out on Apr 1st, 2016 on the bands’ GAS Union label. You can watch the trailer at this link or below:
Front man Bert McCracken comments on the new live album”
“From the beginning of working on this project we took it incredibly seriously and it was so magical to be able to rehearse for a full week nine hours a day with such talented musicians.Leading up to that show and listening back to it, it’s definitely the most special thing I’ve done in my career in music.”
Live And Acoustic At The Palace album Track listing:
1. Tunnel
2. The Taste of Ink
3. Yesterday’s Feelings
4. Lunacy Fringe
5. The Bird And The Worm
6. Paralyzed
7. All That I’ve Got
8. Overdose
9. Blue And Yellow
10. Hard To Say
11. Imagine (John Lennon Cover)
12. On My Own
Formed in Orem, UT in 2001, The Used will embark on a 15th Year anniversary tour in the spring of 2016, playing two nights in each city and perform both their Self-Titled album and In Love and Death (both Reprise) each night.
Every Time I Die is a touring machine. Year in and year out they make their bones playing big clubs, sold-out concerts and festivals. Anyone who has seen them multiple times knows they are great performers for their fans and remarkably consistent too! ETID released the special Salem EP (Epitaph) on Record Store Day. They just wrapped up a tour opening for The Used, themselves well-known road warriors. The tour also featured up and coming bands such as Marmozets and The Eeries making for a stacked bill of veteran bands and new blood. This photo set comes to Ghost Cult courtesy of Meg Loyal of Meg Loyal Photography, and we thank her for sharing these killer images!
Making waves (see what I did there…) following two introductory EP on Density Records, talented quintet Oceans Ate Alaska, from Birmingham, England, are a schizophrenic psychotic tick in musical guise. Dubbing themselves as progressive metalcore seems to undersell and mislead, as Lost Isles (Fearless) showcases a high degree of technical proficiency, spurting spasming rhythms of meticulous, systematic precision and understated melodic britcore (yes, I’m using that phrase and with no apologies – British metalcore sounds different to its American counterpart).
As if adamant to prove that under the sea lives all manner of chaotic life form, within 43 seconds of opening track ‘Blood Brothers’ (we’ll ignore the inevitable, ubiquitous, unnecessary “intro” track) we’ve been treated to convulsion of rhythmic battery alongside vocal paroxysms that spit out three different styles, screamo, death metal growl and sung, over three different riffs, before the song lurches off-kilter into yet more spasmodic sections.
The process of bursts of rapid-fire arrhythmic violence continues throughout, seeking to cuff the brain into submission with unyielding sonic ruptures, a tech metal death by a thousand guitar stabs, before Oceans Ate Alaska open up their sound on ‘Vultures and Sharks’ and start to truly display the potential within.
There are inevitable comparisons to Bring Me The Horizon, mainly in that James Harrison’s sung tones and the melody lines used are not a million miles away from Oli Sykes, but Oceans… are a different beast; there’s added Meshuggah and spice to their stylings. Fellow scribe Chris Tippell coined them BMTH meets The Contortionist and his radar is as tight as the intermittent punch that permeates ‘Over The Edge’ on his tech-prog-core.
It can be difficult setting out to try and differentiate yourselves from others, and Oceans Ate Alaska perhaps push things too far in setting their stall in the kitchen-sink side of headfuck music, though they can take credit from the fact that not only are they ploughing their own furrow, but they have the technical chops and ear for melody to make it happen for themselves. Lost Isles is a sensory overload that will make an impression on the ears and minds of those who like their discordance delivered as a staccato premeditated cudgelling, while with tunes like ‘Downsides’ in their arsenal, the band have the breadth to push into more melodic and conventional streams.
So, now they’ve consumed Alaska, it’ll be very interesting to see what they fancy making for dessert…
Sacramento noise-merchants Will Haven bring their cascading, lurching live deep aural battery to the UK in May ahead of their impending Artery Records release Open The Mind To Discomfort
Main support comes from Corby’s greatest, Raging Speedhorn.
Opening act on the tour is Palm Reader, who will release their second opus of skull-splitting post-hardcore, Besides The Ones We Love via In At The Deep End on 6th April.
Ahead of the tour, Palm Reader have premiered a new track ‘By The Ground, We’re Defined’
With a name like Youth Funeral, you’re probably not expecting the most cheerful music to emanate from your speaker system, and you wouldn’t wrong with that assumption. Combining post-hardcore and screamo, this New-Hampshire four piece have crafted a sound bursting in youthful energy, careering its way violently from beginning to end.
Coming in at 6 tracks and 11 minutes long, the record is virtually over as soon as you’ve hit the play button. See You When I See You (Twelve Gauge Records) is a short snap of angst. Far from being underdeveloped though, the short timing works in the EP’s favour. The songs are chaotic, lacking the usual clear progression, but the short lengths leave no time for the listener to tire of what they are hearing, keeping the songs consistently fresh and constantly angry.
It’s not all a bludgeoning assault either. ‘Confidante’s’ extended timing allows it to twist into atmospheric sections while ‘I Remember’ strips back into basic riffing. This doesn’t last long though as ‘When it Pours’ and ‘The Weak and the Ward’ roll out jumping riffs that virtually falls over themselves; combined with their almost dissonant chord progressions they easily stand out as the strongest tracks on the EP.
While See You When I See You won’t find itself spinning on my CD player often, that isn’t saying there isn’t merit to the music. The style is chaotic and stumbling but isn’t clumsy. The band walk a delicate balance between structure and absolute chaos, and pull it off with an ease that keeps each switching section sitting easily in one song. This is a band I’m sure we’ll be seeing on the scene for a long time to come.
