Labels: Bear
Review by: Oli Saunders
Without ever really blowing me away this is a pretty solid screamo split. I have followed both bands over the last year or so and listened to some of the records they’ve released – they’ve also been reasonable but not spectacular. But it’s good to finally see a vinyl release with both of them on.
Pianos Become The Teeth, whose name appears to make no sense, traditionally play long drawn out screamo. Could perhaps be referred to as post-rock screamo if one is being pretentious. Their one track here, ‘Creatures Of Habit’, doesn’t drift too much into epic instrumental guitar territory though, which is a good thing. A lot of their songs on other records do and it works the first time you hear it but from that point out tends to get a little boring. Here the track takes two minutes before the vocals kick in, though the intro is nice enough, and from then on it speeds along in a fashion that I find most enjoyable. It winds down around the six minute mark and finishes off with a quiet instrumental part fading out. The song is actually eight and a half minutes in total which is long for one side of a 7” but the sound quality is still fine. This is the best stuff I have heard from these guys.
Ezra Joyce, on the other side, play shorter screamo songs. They sound reasonably similar to Pianos Become The Teeth though, minus the drawn out parts, as well as other bands such as Ghost Towns, Antilles and Trifle Tower. It is interesting to me how influenced bands are in general by the contemporary bands of similar style around them. A lot do end up sounding the same. I think if I was played a random screamo song that I have not heard before I could take a pretty good guess at where the band is from. Anyway, Ezra Joyce have screamed bits and shouted bits, sometimes everyone joins in. Their second track ‘The Depletion Of Suns’ is a slight standout over the first song, even though they appear to be ripping off that ‘O Fortuna’ song a little bit at the start. Remember when Botch covered that song? I thought it was awesome. The ending of the track is really cool, the instruments go quiet for a bit and they still scream over the top, it sounds really good. In summary, two bands playing cool screamo that you might enjoy and might wanna check out.
24th June 2009