159. Glassjaw – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence
[NickMango from twitter asked for anything from Long Island that's punk/hardcore/screamo - so I'll start with this one]
This album is an acquired taste. But once you acquire a taste for it, you’ll never let it go, even when the primal screams, the spittled hatred, the vulgarities and obscenities, the passionate loss, the bitterness anger and rage that all co-exist on this album no longer mean anything to you, you will still cling to EYEWTKAS like a torn, ragged teddy bear that you don’t need anymore, but you keep it anyhow, because if life sucked this hard once, it just might suck again, and you never know when you’ll need to scream lyrics like “I just might fuck you enough to love you” into your pillow.
What this album has going for it that a lot of screamfests don’t is there are beautiful melodies and moments of such sorrowful disquiet throughout that all the abuse, unfaithfulness, disease and pain that what should leave you filled with a bitter adrenaline instead makes you just want to cry for every time any of those words meant anything to you. EYEWTKAS plays out as a well crafted, if sordid, documentary of love, pain, sickness and betrayal, a tale where there are no heroes and no one wins.
Once upon a time, this album and angry lyrics like “as long as your mouth is shut, you’ll still be fucking beautiful” could be a stinging reminder of the way things were, but now, it’s just pure hardcore enjoyment; it’s all about projection. Put this on in the car after a rough day at work and you’re not screaming at a girl or a guy, you’re not pissed at having your heart broken, you’re just primal screaming your way out of a bad mood.
Favorite song: Motel of the White Locust (don’t listen to this at work, ok? And stick around for the bittersweet, pretty bonus song at the end, with its lyrics that are the perfect ending to things gone wrong.)
Singer Daryl Palumbo is also the singer for the groovy Head Automatica (where he sings, not screams)
Powered by FireStats
January 9th, 2009
Ok, I looked this band up on iTunesd. My BIL is always going on (not really) about how one of his childhood friends is/was a member of Gorilla Biscuits, which the album review mentions was the band the drummer was in before this one. I’m not sure/don’t remember which guy was the one he knew. I’ll have to ask.
January 10th, 2009
Ok, I asked my husband. Walter Schreifels was my bil’s best friend in high school.
January 10th, 2009
Very cool. We were just talking about Gorilla Biscuits and CIV yesterday. I’ll probably get around to the first CIV album this month.
And Rival Schools was great.
January 11th, 2009
One of the interesting things about Glassjaw is Justin Beck. He owns Merchdirect in Bay Shore LI. They are probably the largest Indie/Punk/hardcore merch company around. Pretty cool hardcore success story.
July 11th, 2009
This album is a CLASSIC, there should be a law saying everyone has to own it. Daryl Palumbo is my favorite singer
PS Since people are talking about it the first CIV album is classic as well