“Pain Without a Touch” is just one product of a year-long writing session they say yielded sixty or so songs in total. Following the release, the two spoke to Post-Trash about engineering their signature sound, embarking on the first Sweeping Promises tour, and joining Twitter as social media skeptics.
Evans has released music spanning emo, doom metal, and post-rock, but always with a focus on experimental noise. 13 Necklace started as a solo project in conjunction with his not-for-profit label Metaphorest, and left to his own devices, Evans leans more toward slacker rock in the lineage of Alex G, only taken to a hazier, gazier place.
Beauty Pill’s discography offers a reminder that art music can challenge you without being obtuse or obscure. Before the release of Instant Night, Chad Clark and co-lead-singer Erin Nelson spoke to Post-Trash about the health crises that brought them together and the high points in artistic life they now get to savor as a group.
Quitter has the primal sound of a group cut loose in the wilderness with only their inventive wits and sheer, screaming force of will to survive. Before the release, David Shellenberg sat down with Post-Trash to talk about recording sessions as glorified hang-outs and unintentionally becoming a straight-edge vegan in the making of Quitter.
Birthday Ass formed at the New England Conservatory, with their academic backgrounds in jazz and contemporary classical music, they all know full well how to read the music, but also when to throw the score out the window and improvise. Priya Carlberg spoke to Post-Trash about Head of the Household, the way the band’s live energy has shaped up over the years, and Jell-O.
It’s not often a band gets harder and lower-fi with time--not without sounding contrived, anyway--but on their new LP II, Japanese post-punk band M.A.Z.E. tap into their hardcore influence with unqualified success. II is faster, furiouser, and more fun, filling in singer Eriko’s vocals with fuzz and throwing some real punch behind guitarist Tatsuya’s oscillating riffs and scorching chord swipes.
On their debut full-length Tell Me I’m Bad, Editrix shifts through permutations of metal and punk faster than you can throw subgenre descriptors at them. For a solid thirty minutes, the lean and loud Massachusetts trio twists and turns through mathy riffs and pummeling breakdowns, phasing in and out of pocket grooves.
Media & Memory has time on its side; you can hear the hours that went into refining its nine tracks, boiling down countless practice sessions, hammering hooks, harmonies, and idiosyncratic drum grooves until they sit completely flush. Before the release, in the midst of coordinating a remix album and pre-recording of two live performances, the trio spoke to Post Trash about the process of excavating the album from hours of preparation.
Along with its catchy classic rock melodies, the sophomore record from Slight Of - the project of New York indie rocker Jim Hill - sets itself apart in its outward-looking stance. That said, Other People’s lyrics may be character-driven, but what makes it such an interesting study isn’t necessarily the subjects.
Just Look At That Sky, the sophomore full-length from Chicago’s Ganser, is the sound of summer. Maybe not in the traditional sense of friendly fun in the sun, but as it builds on their penchant for dark, pulsing atmospherics and razor-sharp attitude, it captures the feel of a summer under lockdown and a post-punk band at their most dialed-in.
