#strangled light

Let’s talk about supergroups for a minute, shall we? I really like them. Supergroups are a cool way for fans to get more of a certain musician that they love, or musicians if there are more than one that they like in the band, but they’re also a good way for musicians themselves to branch out into something new. Not always, mind you, because if you look at a few supergroups that I’ve been into lately, you’ll see that one of them isn’t exactly anything new (that would be Isles & Glaciers, the supergroup from Craig Owens, Jonny Craig, and Vic Fuentes, along with a few other musicians; their brand of post-hardcore wasn’t anything different or new from each members’ respective bands, or even what bands like I The Mighty, Tides Of Man, or Hands Like Houses would do in the next couple of years). There are some, though, that definitely do something new, interesting, and different from what you’d expect. There are two key supergroups that I’ve been listening to lately, and weirdly enough, they both feature current and former members of the same band. Those two supergroups are Sunndrug and Hundred Suns. Both bands feature current and former members of Norma Jean, a band that I’ve slowly been getting more into (I just picked up all over their 2000s work, and I thought their last LP, 2016’s Polar Similar, was surprisingly awesome), but they sound almost nothing like Norma Jean. Sunndrug, and their debut LP, 2016’s Exit Wounds, was one of my top favorite albums of last year. It was fantastic, as well as being an album that made me fall in love with music yet again, and it’s unfortunately an album that a lot of people probably missed out on. Not completely surprising, just because their sound is very weird, different, and unique (imagine Chevelle, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails got together and had a baby), but that still sucks. Hundred Suns, however, is more on the accessible side, and I’ll be talking about their debut LP, The Prestaliis, in my next review, so stay tuned for that, but they have a sound that’s definitely more on the Deftones, Tool, and Chevelle side of rock, post-metal, and alt-metal.

Most supergroups go one way or the other day, meaning that they’ll add something new to a musicians’ sound or influence, or they just keep to the musicians’ known wheelhouse. Both kinds of supergrounds can work well, and while I’m on the side of people that think supergroups should be more interesting and different, I don’t mind if they’re not. Like I said, Isles & Glaciers is a great example of a supergroup whose sound doesn’t add anything or do anything different from their respective bands, but 2010’s The Hearts Of Lonely People is a great EP. There are a few reasons why that EP is so great, and it would take awhile to get into, but it works quite well, because they go above and beyond with that sound. Having three prominent vocalists in the scene at the time definitely helps a lot, and not one vocalist gets more time to shine than another, which I really love about that record. The reason I bring that up, too, is because it doesn’t always work. Supergroups that veer more into familiar territory doesn’t always work, just because you feel as though you’ve heard it before, or it’s not as interesting as the musicians’ original band(s). The band that I’ll be talking about today isn’t necessarily a supergroup, but I consider them to be that, only because they feature a couple of members of a prominent post-hardcore band. I’ll be talking about the band Less Art, and their debut LP, Strangled Light, but you might recognize a couple of members of this band from the post-hardcore band Thrice. That’s a band that’s been around for many, many years now, and I’ve got somewhat mixed feelings on Thrice. I’m not a diehard fan of them, but I do like them a lot. Their last LP, To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere, is one that surprised me. I wasn’t sure I’d really like that one, but it did wonders for me. The album is a great mix of all of their sounds and influences over the years, and when I heard about Less Art, I was oddly curious, because they were a post-hardcore band in the same vein.

Even though I’ve been listening to a lot of early 00s stuff, I thought it would be neat to listen to Strangled Light, but I’ll be honest – I haven’t come back to this much at all. It’s not even that it sucks, or that it’s garbage, but I don’t know how I feel about this album. Just because I’m cutting back on reviews, that doesn’t mean that I only want to talk about stuff that I really love, even though that’s true. That’s what I’m mainly dedicating my reviews to, but I still want to talk about stuff that I have something to say about one way or the other. Less Art’s Strangled Light is an album that I’m not really into, but I wanted to talk about why. I think it’s that Strangled Light is a one-two punch of an album that doesn’t extremely work for me. The first punch is that, well, it’s a post-hardcore album, and I’m not already super into the genre (especially modern post-hardcore, anyway). If it’s generic, lifeless, and boring, or at the very least, one of those things, I’m already not feeling it, but I think the thing that bothers me the most about this album, ultimately being the second punch, is that this LP doesn’t do much of anything that I haven’t heard from Thrice. If you like Thrice, you’ll like this album, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s not a horrible thing when you really look at it. If you like Thrice, and you want more Thrice, you’ll be fine with this LP. The thing is, though, this LP just doesn’t cut it. I will admit that they add somewhat of a spoken-word delivery within their vocals, and while I can respect that, I don’t like it much. It’s not horrible, or anything like that, but it’s so jarring, weird, and off-putting compared to the music itself, especially when the background instrumentation is so loud. When it comes to spoken-word music, the backing instrumentation shouldn’t be mixed so high, but it’s not even that, really, because what gets me is that the spoken-word style isn’t really kept within the album consistently. You’ll hear it on a couple of tracks, but then there will be more harsh vocals, and you’re just like, “Huh? Where did that come from?” I think what bothers me, too, is that there’s nothing bad here. This is a solid enough record, and especially for being only 34 minutes, it does what it does well.