Damokles – Downpour For Lifetimes
Similar artists: At the Drive-In, Rival Schools, Glassjaw, Sparta
Genre: Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore
Norwegian post-hardcore kids Damokles drive themselves totally insane, a technique that’s worked well for many artists and for the audiences that have followed their work.
The promise of a safe, comfortable existence has never been made to artists. This, after all, isn’t a pilates class taken in a trendy city neighbourhood. It’s a war of sorts, even if the worst battles go in the mind of the creator.
The ones who are not blessed with this kind of conflict know instinctively they have to start it themselves. In any other avenue of life, this would be considered an act of self-sabotage. But in great art, it could just be a portal.
Damokles’s “Downpour For Lifetimes” sounds like a jigsaw puzzle that has fallen onto the floor and has purposely been put back together all jumbled up. It’s a song that contains a post-hardcore verse and an almost hair-metal chorus. It’s quite a combination, quite a recipe for confusion, and quite a way forward for the Scandinavians.
Of Night And Light – Dark Passenger
Similar artists: Saosin, Thrice, Microwave, Chevelle
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Alternative Rock
Few people expect philosophers to work in an office, pick up the groceries afterwards and read the kids a bedtime story. Perhaps that’s why there are so few philosophers around. More than a simple profession, deep thinkers are both blessed and cursed. Their misfortune is to always have to look at life for what it is, not what they hope it might be.
It seems only natural then that modern philosophers would take to pickling up guitars, or drumsticks and fitting their words to a beat. The world won’t listen to whole truths unless they are, at least, half entertained. And rock songs require that the author glance upon their existence and those of others and reveal the things that others would want to be hidden.
Of Night And Light’s “Dark Passenger” is a post-hardcore-inspired meditation about the passing of time and the futility of ever hoping one can fully attain for one’s mistakes. Musically, the song is built from anxious, pumping guitar-rock energy and a vocal performance that spends its time treading on a precipice. Now, this is something you might expect from a philosopher.
