Labels: Agony – Don’t Care – Framecode – React With Protest – Samegrey – structures
Review by: Oli Saunders
I reviewed Cassus’ last offering roughly two years ago and since then have seen them live a couple of times and have loosely followed what they’ve been up to. Finally they’ve made a full-length; a twenty minute dose of screamo in 2015. I’ll definitely take that.
A gentle guitar introduces the record before a minute in they’ve had enough and the band’s true colours show; two members shriek over the top of a mess of drums and some wonderful jarring guitars. The guitars are a highlight but the shrieking certainly works well too. I wasn’t sure about the sung vocals that come in towards the end but they grew on me after a second listen.
The rest of the album is not unlike this; you know what, the half-sung vocals make it far more interesting and less cliched than it would be otherwise. It’s stop-start here and there. Track 3 “Exchange Rates Are Exactly What They Used To Be” is my favourite. The desperation in his voice is great and it’s got a uniqueness to it. The songs are short and sweet with enough variance to keep it interesting. One criticism is that it doesn’t seem to hold together well as an album. The songs don’t flow into one another at all; it’s not exactly easy to do with music like this but it stops me wanting to listen to the album in one go.
Decent screamo overall; the band have definitely come along some more.
16th December 2015