Superheaven

Ours Is Chrome

Written by: PP on 18/07/2015 00:00:50

Oh, it's gonna be like that is it?

Ya'll remember Daylight on their EPs? The gravelly punk rock band with Red City Radio-esque sing along anthems? They were solid, but nothing compared to the magnificence of their Title Fight-esque debut album "Jar" from 2013, which seamlessly merged together elements of punk, post-hardcore and grunge into a dreamy yet powerful expression that placed the record on many a top 10 list by the end of the year. Since then they've been forced to change name from Daylight into Superheaven due to legal disputes, but that's not the only change attributable to the band's progress. Sophomore album "Ours Is Chrome" namely sees the band take yet another evolutionary step forward, this time opting for a lighter touch and a far dreamier approach than before. Seems like they're going to be that band that'll never write the same album twice.

In reality, the band's progression is eerily similar to the one taken by Title Fight on their newest album, except with way less reverb in the guitars. Instead, Superheaven primarily seek towards grunge and extend the genre with the same dreamy, extended vocal work as we heard on "Jar". The key difference? The sheer power that revolved around "Jar" songs is pretty much gone. The songs are delivered with less volume, less noise, and in a less hard-hitting way. Instead, the band go for a slower and more dreamy approach that sees them focus on atmospherics, which from experience is a one of those things that is extremely difficult to get right. A song like "Leach" is arguably the most "Jar"-like song on the record, but even here the band sound more like Turnover or Light Years than themselves. The less heavy approach removes the power that their songs had in the past, replaced with fluffy floating around that's supposed to hypnotize the listener but doesn't quite achieved that on the record.

Elsewhere, the band's Nirvana worship starts taking worrying features as riffs from "Room" are practically identical to "In Utero" era material all the way down to the way the distortion works in the song. "Next To Nothing", on the other hand, is a dreamy piece with light vocals floating over calm instrumentation that recalls Title Fight's softer songs. But that's about all the variation the record has: everything else feels like a one, extremely long song. Sure, "Jar" was also uniform in its sound structure, but it simply had better songs on it. "Ours Is Chrome" is different from "Jar", yet it feels like a record where the band has ran out of ideas. A sophomore slump, let us hope.

Download: I've Been Bored, Leach, Gushin' Blood
For the fans of: Title Fight, Basement, Balance & Composure, Turnover, Light Years, Nirvana
Listen: Facebook

Release date 04.05.2015
SideOneDummy

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