posted 11/04/2008 (Tue) @ 06:02 pm
>>> Music Reviews
Fear Before - Fear Before (2008)
Experimental / Metal / Noise-Pop
A Stranger Stranger
- Tree Man
- I’m Fine Today
- Fear Before Doesn’t Listen To People Who Don’t Like Them
- Get Your Life Together
- Jabberwocky
- Everything’s Not Shitty
- Tycho
- Bad Days
- Stay Weird
- Review Our Lives (Epic)
Art damaged fretboard arsonists Fear Before the March of Flames have always been an odd beast. Their wild-eyed and bloodthirsty records travel in pairs.
In the mood for screamo? Look up their fame inducing Odd How People Shake. Just don’t expect “On the Brightside, She Could Choke,” that record’s scene kid approved favorite, to be on their live setlist ever again.
If Odd How… isn’t abrasive enough, the raw meat, jet turbine squall of the bordering-on-unlistenable, but appropriately titled Art Damage surely shall be.
For better or worse, Fear Before have never been afraid to piss into the wind, or upon less open-minded fans. 2006 was the year that saw them prove it. A far cry from those early ventures, the everything but the kitchen sink, industrial/electronica experimentation of The Always Open Mouth saw to it that these Colorado natives were henceforth counted among a tiny handful of bands that consistently reinvent themselves for every record.
“There’s nothing stranger than a stranger,” they’re quick to tell us. Lately, their music has metamorphosized from creepy-crawly, “quick, smash it before it touches me” scene hardcore into something melodic, yet noisy, and above all, unclassifiable.
The Always Open Mouth bartered Fear Before’s abrasive heaviness for sonic density, yielding a crop of songs which sound ferocious on record, but pose problems to recreate in a live context. Here, brevity acts as the sugar to help the medicine go down. As long as you don’t miss the March of Flames of yesteryear, Fear Before is their greatest and most easily-swallowed record yet.
Clocked at under 40 minutes, everything’s shorter on Fear Before, right down to the band’s officially truncated name. And it’s tighter, too. Hooks immediately dig in deep when “Tree Man” lunges for the jugular with its spooky vocalizations and palm-muted rundowns. “I’m Fine Today” pits gothic wails against a battering ram guitar chug, and “Fear Before Doesn’t Listen To People Who Don’t Like Them” opens with the sputtering, desperate heart murmur of an amplifier at breaking point, then descends into passages that concoct imagery of Adam Fisher strumming helicopter blades instead of guitar strings.
Mostly quiet (mostly) “Jabberwocky” plays like “Absolute Future Pt. 2,” a complete departure from the band’s earlier works, sinister and comfortable in its eerily sparse arrangement. But wait! Noise mavens, never fear! Fear Before still dabble in discord, as on the closing “Review Our Lives (Epic).” A mashed-up wall of Marshall stacks, and the off-kilter duet of guitarist Fisher and singer David Marion’s voices, clear the way for lonely trem-picked sirens. The song descends into deconstructed sludge riffs and implodes, concluding the record in a soup of Satanic noise.
If their track record is any indication, Fear Before’s next record (2010’s self-titled Fear, perhaps?) will bear even less resemblance to the cookie cutter, wrist-slicer screamo of their past… and probably won’t sound anything like this, either. They don’t care what you or I think. So, enjoy their newfound love of metal/noise-pop while you can, on this and on The Always Open Mouth. Knowing them, it’s sure to be fleeting.
The recording of Fear Before
song: “Fear Before Doesn’t Listen to People Who Don’t Like Them”
Tourette’s Guy endorses The Always Open Mouth
Links
Download (All Time Greatest Hits) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace
Tags: best of 2008 candidates, experimental, fbtmof, fear before, fear before the march of flames, march of flames, metal, noise, noise pop
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December 24th, 2008 at 4:51 am[...] Vote Fear Before - Fear Before (2008) [...]
