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Senses Fail - News
Senses Fail mixes hardcore with emo
| 17-10-2008 09:01 | 0 reaction(s) | add reaction | add news |
 Senses Fail has always skated a thin line between genres. For every meaty guitar riff or high flying solo, there’s a crooning chorus or subtle drumbeat. One part hardcore rock band, one part emo, one part scene, Senses Fail is notoriously hard to define in hard, fast terms.
However, instead of leaning one way or another, Senses Fail seems to revel in their outsider status. When listening to their new album, Life Is Not a Waiting Room, the band quickly shifts form and sound frequently, often even in the middle of songs.
With this new album Senses Fail has found their stride, honing their unnatural blend of hardcore and emo into a delicious musical cappuccino. Vocalist James “Buddy” Nielsen has always written pained lyrics and had a vocal styling to match.
He always sounds on the verge of tears, which is fitting when one sings about addiction, death and family issues.
Nielsen’s lyrics were tinged by a deeply personal experience during the creation of Life Is Not a Waiting Room.
At a Dallas show, Nielsen met a fan with terminal cancer. The two became close friends and Nielsen kept in contact with the young man.
When that man’s condition took a turn for the worse, Nielsen flew down to his Texas home and spent time with the young man until he passed away.
Afterwards, Nielsen wrote “Yellow Angels” and “Four Years” to deal with his feelings regarding the loss. Nielsen said “Yellow Angels” was about having to remember, “to live in the moment and love myself and life.”
“Four Years” was about “being influenced by such a life-changing [experience] and having to make new decisions about my relationship and what it really was,” Nielsen said.
Those two songs are the most lyrically powerful, and you can hear the impact the young man had on Nielsen on the record. It’s an intense experience that can only be spawned from a one-time event.
But offsetting Nielsen’s deeply personal and, at times, downplayed lyrics are the dual guitarists’ (Garrett Zablocki and Heath Saraceno) strong guitar work. And they provide their best work on Life Is Not a Waiting Room.
The riffs in songs such as “Lungs Like Gallows” and “Wolves At The Door” could easily be transplanted into the record of a hardcore act.
“Lungs Like Gallows” in particular is impressive. A quick, choppy scale climb opens the song and quickly transitions into a speed metal-lite riff. The scale climb provides a chunky backing to Nielsen’s catchy chorus. The twin, intertwining solo near the end of the song just wraps up the whole package into one hell of an album opener.
Zablocki and Saraceno’s fretwork is equal times heavy and technical. They play off one another with an ease that can only come out of years playing together. Zablocki and Saraceno are able to create sounds that simultaneously accompany Nielsen’s lyrics while at the same time giving them more strength.
By all accounts, the hardcore rock guitars and emo-esque lyrics should not mesh. And, on earlier discs, they sometimes didn’t.
But on their latest release, Senses Fail have hit their stride full force, creating sounds a wide range of music lovers can appreciate and enjoy. |
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