2015 saw a lot of alt-rock bands with a slight emo slant breaking through, particularly in the UK. Few are as impressive as Gloucestershire-based quintet Future Talk, a band whom seem to recognise that huge melodies are equally as important as musical prowess. The band’s appeal is also very much helped by the fact that the four songs on their ‘The Road That Sadness Paved’ EP have less of the sheen and fewer vocal filters than is often associated with acts of a similar style.
Tag Archives: emo
ORCHARD HILL – Make It Out Alive
A self-released EP, Orchard Hill’s ‘Make It Out Alive’ comes with a surprisingly American sound for a quartet from Oxfordshire. With some tough pop-punk/emo chops and a first rate production job from Ben Humphries [Maximo Park] and John Mitchell [You Me At Six], this debut is incredibly professional. For the genre, you’d be hard pushed to find a better sounding release from bands with ten times the budget at their disposal.
MIDNIGHT PLAYLIST – Built To Break EP
London’s Midnight Playlist are a four piece alternative pop-rock/pop-punk band, who bring a strong sense of good times and youthful spirit on their debut EP ‘Built To Break’. There’s a real energy present from the very beginning of the opening track: a door slams, voices chatter, an amplifier buzzes…and with that, the quartet burst into life. That opener ‘A Year In Hell’ mixes pop-punk guitar chords and an alternative rock spirit, like a DIY collision between early Sum 41 and Don Broco; it’s a performance on which drummer Atish really excels. Twin guitars chug and thrash in classic punk-pop style – even making room for a couple of lead flourishes – while lead vocalist Aaron cries each line with confidence, all the while happy to let his natural accent through, despite the attempts of a few vocal filters to make his voice sound more generic to the musical style. You’ll have heard this sort of thing a thousand times before, but there’s an energy and tightness here – even obvious despite the limited recording budget – that makes this tune very enjoyable all round.
New video from Marmozets: ‘Move, Shake, Hide’
Hot on the heels of a great album release and video for ‘Born Young & Free’, Marmozets have another treat for you.
MARMOZETS – The Weird And Wonderful Marmozets
Signed to Roadrunner Records at the tail end of 2013 on the strength of two demo EPs and a couple of independently released singles, Yorkshire’s Marmozets are a powerhouse of alt-metal and mathrock. Their full length debut ‘The Weird and Wonderful Marmozets’ is full of great choruses, which combined with some tight musicianship results in an album with pretty much no weak elements. While the studio recordings do not always entirely capture the incendiary power of their live act, the album’s thirteen numbers have a real sense of urgency and – more importantly – songs that really force their way into the subconscious.