Hogan’s Albums of the Week – 11/10

So I initially thought my new music post was gonna be kinda short this week, I really didn’t have much I wanted to talk about when the day started, but things kinda fell in my lap over the past few hours, and predictably, it snowballed quite a bit from there. Much to my surprise, I’ve actually got some really good albums for you all to check out this week. Some of them have actually been pleasant surprises for me, as well. The last album on this list, for example, is from a band that I discovered probably 30 minutes ago, so this post has proven informative to myself too, which is always nice.

Hail the Sun – When today started, I thought there was only one album that I was gonna write about, but just this morning, these guys dropped a new single and announced a surprise 5 song EP, to be released tomorrow. I’m actually listening to it right now, and it’s incredible. But that should come as no surprise to any of you that are familiar with Hail the Sun. They’re a part of that kind of unofficial collective of progressive post-hardcore bands that orbit around Dance Gavin Dance, so bands like Eidola, A Lot Like Birds, Stolas, Sianvar, etc. Basically, the Blue Swan Records crowd. Sonically, it’s just organized chaos; how these guys can weave so many different rhythms, melodies, time signatures, etc and make it all come together in one cohesive piece of music is absolutely beyond me, but they pull it off brilliantly. The only way I’d be happier with this is if it were a full length. If you’re a fan of Dance Gavin Dance, or any of these other bands (which if you’re a fan of DGD, you should be), you’ll love this EP.

Speak the Truth… Even if Your Voice Shakes – You know how I said there was only one album I was planning on writing about this week? This is it. To start things off, this band features the final lineup of Finch, with Buddy Neilson, the singer from Senses Fail. I honestly think that tells you everything you need to know about this album. It sounds like a more mature version of early 2000’s emo bands like, well, Finch and Senses Fail. For some reason, be it coincidence or clever mindfuck marketing, Finch has been popping up in my life rather frequently lately, and this really feels like the perfect follow up to what was, honestly, a band that was terribly underrated mostly due to their commercial success early on in the early 2000’s emo movement’s surge of popularity. That sort of mainstream adoption didn’t really fly very well back then, but I think people are starting to look back and realize how special they actually were. And Buddy Neilson does an excellent job of helping the guys continue that legacy.

Spook the Horses – This is the band that I discovered maybe 30 minutes ago, and I’m just so impressed with them. I will admit, they are kind of out there. Spook the Horses appeal to that weird side of my musical taste that loves some of the less accessible things like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Bell Witch, or Year of No Light. Which are, incidentally, all apt comparisons. These guys are a kind of really dark, atmospheric post-metal; they aren’t as avant garde as Godspeed, or as sludgey as Bell Witch, but they’re still kind of out there, and really just straight up spooky, and I love it. The guitars permeate what is already a massive soundscape with this unsettling dissonance that sounds wonderful, but you can never quite get comfortable with. You know in some horror movies where the monster or whatever moves in a really weird way? Like the way they walk isn’t quite human, but you can’t figure out what it is, and that fact alone makes everything all the more eerie? That’s what this is. Which if, of course, exactly what they were trying to accomplish, and they did so brilliantly. I’m in love with this band from the get go, I’ll be checking out their back catalog for sure.