HARDCORE….NO MORE

Straight off my missed connection with Walter Schreifels, Vince from MetalSucks has done posts on Walter bands TWO days in a row.  Once for Rival Schools, and the other time for Quicksand.  I was happy to see such a good response to these posts, since, most MetalSucks commenters flip a shit if they’re not talking about something totally br0000000tal.  After all, there is more to life and heavy music than just Slayer and Iron Maiden.  I’m a big fan of some good solid post-hardcore.  Walter has definitely been an icon in this realm, and the man’s had a very diverse career.  As I’ve noted before, hardcore dudes like him tend to go soft after a while.  With every new project Walter came out with, he slowly became less and less heavy.  It happens a lot.  People just stop being angry, I guess.

Recently, I was revisiting a post-hardcore band I was into a few years ago called mewithoutYou.  I interviewed them once for my college newspaper and was super stoked at how nice they were.  I feel like not that many people in the metal world ever knew about these guys.  Probably because they’re Christian.  But they’re not one of THOSE Christian bands…they just really like Jesus.  It’s cool..whatever.  mewithoutYou definitely have a lot of Quicksand influence….as well as a little At the Drive-In and Jawbox.  It’s really solid stuff.  Singer Aaron Weiss has a unique shout/sing style that tends to make people love or hate the band overall.  But I like it.  It’s very authentic.  Aaron seems like a really passionate guy, so it works.

But over the course of just a few years, mewithoutYou underwent quite a transformation from hardcore/post hardcore wonder to something that quite resembles a “kumbaya” sing along.  We see changes in artists of every genre, but to watch a band emerge from the hardcore bubble as a happy-go-lucky bunch is something that I find really fascinating.  For those of you who have never heard mewithoutYou, here is a brief overview:

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This is a live video from 2000 of them playing “Flamethrower,” a song from a very old EP they did before they were signed. (By Tooth and Nail, of course).  The sound quality isn’t very good on here, but there’s screaming, there’s moshing…you get the idea.  This is a hardcore show, straight up.

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(Better version of this video: here.)After getting signed, and a few changes in the lineup, the band put out A to B Life in 2002.  Their sound was still pretty heavy, but just a bit more polished.  This is their video for “Bullet to Binary.”  I love this album.  It’s so….haunting.

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(Better version: here.) In 2004, mewithoutYou released Catch For Us the Foxes, which put them at their absolute peak.  This is when they really started to take off.  Buzzgrinder even put this one as their #1 album of the decade.  Can’t say I disagree.  It’s definitely a lot more melodic and “pretty” than A to B Life was, but still had a lot of punch.  This is the video for “January 1979.”  Probably the most well-known song by them.

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It’s hard to follow up an album that so many loved, so when Brother, Sister came out in 2006, many were a tad disappointed.  Again, the “pretty” level was up’d, and the “rawk” was turned waaaay down.  I still liked the album, but I was never able to love it.  They just didn’t have quite the same intensity as before.  I knew things were headed south.  This is a song called “A Glass Can Only Spill What it Contains.”

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And there ya have it, folks.  Transformation: complete.  I never even bothered getting my hands on 2009’s It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright!, because once I saw this video for “The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie,” I knew it was all over.  A lot of it probably has to do with them losing a member, and adding piano.  It’s just…odd.  Normally I’m one to support a band for trying something different with each album they put out, but this is just….not my thing at all.  Most of you probably won’t make it through even 30 seconds of that.

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I guess bands can’t help what sort of “mental state” they’re in when they go to write an album, but it’s really amazing how in just a matter of a few years…how different the same few people can sound.  Seriously…watch the first video and the last video again.  Would you ever believe that was the same band?  At any rate, A to B Life and Catch For Us the Foxes are still incredible albums that you should listen to if you haven’t already.

What band’s “evolution” are you fascinated with?

-Elise