A variety of sounds that will make you anxious, excitable, depressed and overwhelmed.
About a week ago, shortly after I posted my previous post on the similarities between punk and trap, I received a DM from a guy named Johnny about his band Anorexia Isan. He sent me link to a music video of a track called ‘A Morning Overture’ (a song off of the bands latest album, ‘The Sad Album’) and I was ironically joyful to find that it was an emo-punk tune, throwing me back to my Modern Baseball days of self-loathing.
Naturally interested, I got up their album on Spotify and what I came across was not what I expected.
You see, these guys are a band that cover all bases for you edgy kids out there. The first track on the album, titled ‘The Wake’, starts off with a woman reciting poetry over Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’, instantly making me ask myself “Shit, have I come to the right place?”. By the time I had double checked that it was in fact the same band I had been referred to, a filthy metal riff blew off my earholes. I can’t say personally that the song was to my taste, but it did get me excited that these guys were going to provide an arsenal of different styles.
Tracks such as ‘The Party Singer’ and ‘Shambles’ had a raw punk aesthetic to them with a quick and upbeat sound, making it exactly the kind of track you could put on the speakers at a skatepark (with the chorus of ‘Shambles’ being an addictive chant for the fellow drunk skaters sat along the halfpipe).
Now I wouldn’t have made the previous statement that this album covers all bases for edgy kids if there wasn’t a fair few grunge tracks, which of course there are. ‘The Sad’, ‘Summer Rain’ and ‘Home Away’ are probably the best examples of what this band can accomplish with a traditional, saturated distortion on the guitar, and some Kurt Cobain styled vocals. The track ‘Find Me’ comes in with spoken word vocals and some filthy guitar licks that really get your nuts (or bean) shaking, throwing itself into an even heavier riff as the drums drop in. We all know that when it comes to songs repeating the same phrase over and over again (as this one does), the accompanying riff needs to be nasty enough that you can feel the angst among the simplified lyrical content. This riff definitely does the trick, making this track something special for the mosh pits.
The rest of the album is fairy hit and miss (for me, anyway). Certain tracks such as ‘We Are the Weak’, ‘The Covenant’ and ‘My Mistake’ seem promising at first, until the vocals come in with an effect that makes the lyrics inaudible and difficult to appreciate. However, with ‘My Mistake’ the effect is much more suited to the psychedelic aesthetic during the first half of the song.
So, there’s enough variety of sound and sub-genres within this album that ties nicely with the overall aesthetic of the band, making it worth listening to in order to find those golden nuggets that you’ll end up putting on your playlists. These guys seem to have really honed their expertise in grunge and punk, making their tracks in these genres the perfect skate tunes. Perhaps an album or two later they’ll have nailed the whole shebang.
Verdict 3.4/5
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