Labels: IFB Records – Inkblot – Moment of Collapse – parade of spectres – Pure Heart – React With Protest
Review by: Oli Saunders
A package of records arrived from React With Protest this morning and at last the wait was over. This split has been on the verge of coming out for a couple of months and the screamo kids need their fix, particularly with the lack of quality of late. Republic Of Dream’s song ‘A Refuge Becoming Utopia’ completely floored me when I heard it recently and there was no way the rest of their songs were going to dissapoint. They race through in just under four minutes on their side of this 7” with about a millisecond between each song, so that it just becomes a blitz of screamo beauty. They have Jan from Louise Cyphre on vocals and the band remind me of LC without the samples and complexity. Just flat out euro screamo as God intended, analogous to what Singaia managed during their brief existence. To the older generation who still love or did love this style, this harks back to those great days when you saw La Quiete. To the newjacks, this should be a wake up call.
Beau Navire have released a lot of music since I reviewed their demo on here. In truth I’ve not followed them much since. They seemed to have started out as a sort of modern take on Jerome’s Dream. It’s really cool, it’s like a classic Witching hour band brought into the 21st century and taking on board all the screamo music that has come out since. But it’s just not as fucking raw as I like – I listen to Usurp Synapse because it makes me think ‘what the fuck is this!’ I dunno what else to say, it’s really solid screamo but I can’t quite connect to it.
Overall, a really good record, put out by a bunch of labels that I love. Republic Of Dreams have delivered the goods for sure; you can bet I’ll be raving about their 10” in a few months. And having my mind blown apart at CMAR. Join me.
13th February 2012