So, Boundaries was a new band to me until we recently crossed paths on their UK tour in support of The Plot In You.
You can check out that review Here:
That was quite the experience- this visceral, explosive band delivered a level of heft that I just wasn’t ready for. So I knew that this album would be a behemoth collection of tracks, but I don’t think I knew quite what I was in for. Right from the off, this album unleashes a level of brutality that you have to prepare yourself for. This one really is a cathartic recording for both the band and the listener. If you don’t walk away from it a different person than when you walked into it, then get outta my office: “You’re fucking fired.”
It is a beautiful collection of songs encapsulated in passion, raw angst, and a new level of violence that I had been hiding away from, which I never knew I needed in my life. It is as manic and majestic as you ever wanted an album to be; the mind boggles as to where the songwriting process starts and how it evolves into what they deliver on the album itself. Every track is spat out like bullets in succinct short bursts, all radio-friendly around the 3-minute mark or less, so get requesting on your granny’s local radio station!
I love the band’s ability to create soundtracks within soundtracks, songs within songs within such a short song, where you are taken on a journey within each track, taken on a journey and thrown out of a moving vehicle by the way you feel after, battered and bruised. This album absolutely flies by; you can barely take it in, process what you are hearing, try to work out how you feel before the next track comes upon you, delivering another level of brutality that you didn’t know was possible.
It is a work of art; the fusion between the guttural delivery of Matthew McDougal’s vocals and Nathan Calcagno’s cleans is a thing to behold, but the sheer sonic violence they manage to deliver across these 14 tracks is just sublime. It’s a mind-blowing collection of tracks that you just have to sit back and admire. Play, Process, Repeat.
Mind-Blown! Yearning: the unbeautiful after arrives July 17th, courtesy of Sumerian Records.
Get yourself into a dark room, crank that shit up ta fuck, and you can thank me after.
Mark
Tracklisting:
1. Malconscience
2. Skies cast amber black
3. May this pain never leave
4. Torn open wide (ft. Make Them Suffer)
5. Bitter ash, bitter love
6. Unequal whole
7. Death will follow me
8. The leper’s bell
9. Crowned and crucified (ft. Landon Tewers)
10. Wasted angel
11. Evidence of extinction
12. Nothing, gathered
13. Only endless
14. Yearning: the unbeautiful after
Band Members:
Matthew McDougal – vocals
Cory Emond – guitars
Cody Delvecchio – guitars
Nathan Calcagno – bass, vocals
Tim Sullvian – drums, vocals
