Wednesday, December 28, 2016

LP Review: "II" by Endless Floods

II
Having recently seen Steve Vai in concert, at the time of this writing anyway, I'm reminded that vocals do not make the song.

Growing up when I did, being in bands when I was, taught me that singers can often times be temperamental, cheap, and unreliable.

The singer in my longest band never bought any equipment save a guitar practice amp and a computer microphone that was plugged into said practice amp.

Many times during practice, said singer plugged his computer microphone into my amp, effectively taking away over half of my stack so he could be heard.

But, my experiences aside, it's important to remember that music is music with lots of vocals, with little vocals, or without any vocals at all. Consider the symphony, how many times have you heard someone complain about the lack of vocals in Beethoven's Fifth?

Endless Floods
Music is a method for someone to express some sort of feelings. Most popular music is an expression of happy feelings, lusty feelings, etc.

It would be wonderful if all trips were happy ones and all feelings were nice, or would it be all too mundane?

This is where it all started when it came to extreme music. Because there are feelings other than the sanguine.

Yesterday, a melancholy took hold of me so powerful I could not shake it. Listening to slow and painful music is what eases that sort of melancholy.

Endless Floods's second LP is a trip through a slum, a road trip to a funeral, or someone getting the phone call that a loved one has died.

Throughout the two epic tracks, there is no light to be found. Only the darkness surrounds the listener. The over fuzzed guitars are the only guides out.

There are intermittent vocals that only scream in pain. They cry out for help that will never come.

In my younger, angrier days, I have spent far too much time screaming in anger. Screaming into the void. Screaming to literally no one.

And no one answered.

II will take you down into the depths of despair we have all endured, but those that we have all walked away from.

In the end, what's more uplifting than that?

Release: 1/6/17
Genre: Doom/Sludge
Label: Dry Cough Records/Fvtvrecordings/Breathe Plastic Records
Formats: LP/Digital/Cassette
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