Pelagic Records – 7th February 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
And so the bio goes: “When envy started out in 1995, the hardcore scene that they were born from was different from what it is today; people were buying 7” records at shows and retrieving their information from fanzines; social media was not even in its infancy yet. Touring outside of Japan was a challenge for Japanese bands”.
Times have indeed changed, and while on the one hand the Internet has availed bands to an international audience – and thus opened up the possibility of touring globally to a pre-established audience – it’s also created a barrier to reaching audiences through the superabundance of channels and it being so easy to get lost in an ocean of choice.
So envy benefitted from being part of a scene in their early years, but the fact they’ve endured and survived changes of their own speaks volumes. ‘Alnair in August’, the first single from what they describe as ‘the new envy era’ emerged around a year ago, meaning The Fallen Crimson has been a long time in coming, and the first song, ‘Statement of Freedom’ is equally a statement of intent: the guitars are expansive yet driving, and the song leaps and lunges through a succession of passages in quick succession: there is the grace of post-rock and the brutality of full-on metal abrasion all packed into three and a half minutes.
Not all of the songs are quite such rollercoasters, tending to lean toward simmering tension and layered guitar atmospherics – but when they do break out the riffs, they really go full-throttle. Erupting from delicately-poised moments of gentle reflection, the furious fires that rage when the overdrive kicks in have even greater impact and strike with full force.
‘Marginalised Thread’ manages to combine arena scale emo with full-on guttural vocal growling without being lame, and it’s the driving ferocity that is the key to the success of The Fallen Crimson.
AA
Aural Aggravation 