Damages - Book Of Caverns - split - 7

Labels: Clue #2
Review by: Oli Saunders

Damages are taking an interesting wander through the genre of hardcore. I’m sure Andrew told me that they were going back towards a more emo sound (à la All Through A Life) but judging from their track on this split this is not the case. They have even more of a Shotmaker sound here, though maybe its a bit more simplistic. This is the main problem with Damages – I think people are going to look at them as a Shotmaker type band who are just not quite as good. I think they need to expand their style slightly and move away from this sort of hardcore. They have an upcoming LP so it will be interesting what they do with this. By the way, despite my slight criticism, ‘Suppression Therapy’ is still a fine song. If they hailed from the UK I would be trekking miles to see them and hailing them one of the UK’s best emo bands. So make of that what you will.

Book Of Caverns… I’m sure I listened to a demo of theirs and wasn’t really into it at all. This song, however, shows more promise. The start is a strange set of riffs that speed up over the course of a minute, before launching into the main song. Ambling melodic emo with some rather desperate vocals, half sung, half shouted. It borders too much on post-hardcore at times, and the vocals are a bit too over the top for my liking, but its pretty solid. If they calmed it down a bit, didn’t try and do weird intros that don’t really fit, then this band could be really good.

6th Aptil 2011