The Life Long Learning journey of the Dear Hunter

The Dear Hunter

One of those blogs that I make a point to keep reading is Angry Metal Guy. I've found out about several great albums thanks to Mister Angry and his Merry Crew of Debauchery. Not only do they do quality metal reviews, but whenever they step outside the metal comfort zone it on the whole tends to be great stuff they write about. I also have a special enjoyment of reading lists and they do some awesome lists on there. But the one that influenced this blog entry was where Mister Angry had alluded that he might be leaving the site. Most of the list I concurred with, others I hadn't listened to. But there was one name that I had never heard of and the way he described it sounded intriguing and almost joyous:

Act III is a ride that shows off everything you need to know about this band and it’s an immensely entertaining ride—orchestras, Queen harmonies, and a 40 genre-style-changes later, you’ll just want to start the disc over again.

How can anyone resist a description like that? The band he was talking about? The Dear Hunter and their album Act III: Life And Death. Now due to the name I actually got confused and thought that they were referring to this indie rock/post punk band Deerhunter. But thankfully it wasn't. So I went on Spotify and gave it a listen. And then another. And then another. And then another. And then another. I think I forgo listening to any other album for about 5 days. It really is that good. So of course being the music nerd that I am I decided that I have to listen to EVERYTHING they've done and read more about them.

Casey Crescenzo

Of course since then I've found out that it isn't really them, it's a him. Casey Crescenzo is his name, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire. He first hit the spotlight when he was a member of a band rather clumsily titled The Receiving End of The Sirens. I haven't really listened to that band but maybe I should. They apparently were categorized as Hardcore, which generally puts me off fairly soon. But I am going to have to put those reservations to the side. Since what Casey has done with The Dear Hunter has got me extremely intrigued. Casey had started writing stuff outside of the band for a while, material that he didn't feel would fit in the general oeuvre of The Sirens. After a while it would seem that they asked him to leave, presumably because his mind was else where. Ah well, their loss. And they folded a couple of years later.  Their loss, our gain.

So Casey decided to throw his weight behind The Dear Hunter. The best way I could describe the music that The Dear Hunter comes out with would be that it is everything that Coldplay wish they could do, but can't. If Freddie Mercury were still alive this is the direction that Queen would have taken. And there is a little bit of Elbow in there as well. Nearly every genre is covered in some way or other and it all fits perfectly. The music swings from one mood to the other using one genre and blending into another. It all sounds very familiar without being repetitive and staying nearly flawlessly original. What we got was an epic concept album, actually. We got Three epic concept albums. All telling the story from birth to death of a character named The Dear Hunter. The story takes place in the later years of the nineteenth century into early parts of the twentieth century. In terms of scope and amount of ideas that are going on the only real comparison would be to Coheed & Cambria who did a five part story, two of which were comic books and three albums where they mixed Heavy Metal, Prog, Hardcore all being conducted with Rush mentality, in fact Casey's singing style is not that dissimilar to Claudio, if only a little less nasally. It is quite obvious that Casey is also an omnivore when it comes to music and he's not afraid to wear his influences in his sleeve.

Act I

The first album was called Act I: The Lake South, The River North, in which the main character is born to a prostitute and a soldier. The father doesn't care so the mother decides to try and raise The Boy on her own, so she renounces her old lifestyle moves to the countryside but in the end she returns back to being a prostitute most likely in order to support her child financially. This album apparently is also bit of a family affair Casey did most of the instrumentations, but recruited his brother to drum and his mother to do some backing vocals. While it doesn't go for the same uber-genre crossing as the subsequent albums, it is by no means any less interesting.  There is a lot of classic feel to this album, with plenty of indie rock thrown in, with lots of harmonized vocals. Though in one song there is plenty of slow swing, jazz if you will thrown in the form of "The Pimp and The Priest" with this slight malevolent sound going right through it. It's a short album, well comparatively speaking, and it's a lovely album. Great starting point.

Act II

The second album was titled Act II: The Meaning of, And all Things Regarding Ms. Leading. This album deals with the teenage years and very early adulthood. The story starts with The Boy burying his mother and setting off for the big city to figure out the history of his mother and possible fatherhood. Whilst there he meets a girl named Ms. Leading, they make love but as it turns out she is a prostitute working for the same pimp that his mother worked for. Eventually his heart his broken and he leaves, with a bad taste in his mouth. The music is massive! In scope, scale and grandeur. Not to mention that the album is also almost twice as long as the previous one. There is a lot more going on in terms of musicianship and general noise then in the previous album, the album starts of with a classical beginning and gets then thrown into hard rock territory. There is a lot of early 1900's feel to this album which when you consider the period it is meant to be set in makes, well, sense. There's swing to be had in great quantities and  harmonized vocals set along with some screaming singing. But I wouldn't have it any other way because in my mind this album is a great teenage angst album without being overtly (and I hate to use the term but) emo. But there is this joyful playing that goes through all the album, especially when the swing and jazz comes through. And the melancholic moments occur on a fairly frequent basis as fits with the story. The best use of that would be in the song "Blood of the Rose".  This is a great album and I would love to hear the material that was cut in order to shorten the album.

Act III: Life And Death

And the concluding album that ties up all the loose ends(well not really) and the pinnacle of the story arc is the aforementioned Act III: Life and Death. It is as close to a perfect concept album as you could get. The background for the album is the First World War. During this story he meets his half-brother without knowing. At one point during the war, there is a bit of downtime and a group of soldiers start sharing stories of their past lives and as it turns out his father happens to be one of them, where he talks about going to a brothel and sleeping with a prostitute called Ms. Terri. During this time the father is nearly killed only to survive because of the half-brothers heroic sacrifice and due to the fathers indifference The Dear Hunter poisons him. The story ends with him taking his half-brothers identity and walking away. If Casey makes good of his promise and releases a book that expands on the story of The Dear Hunter I will be buying it. As for the music on here, well it is again bombastic and grand. There is a lot going on with some serious genre-bending going on. One song ends with a traditional soldiers song, another song goes for folk music with great use of the banjo. There's also hints of arena rock with this big huge massive guitar going on a rampage, akin to Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds. I don't think Casey will be able to top this album, but quite frankly he doesn't need to.

The Color Spectrum

After the massive story arc about The Boy, Casey decided to go for another huge undertaking and created an EP to represent The Colour Spectrum. Truthfully I haven't listen to all of those, but the ones I have heard have been very good in particular the Yellow Ep and Orange Ep. They all seem to go for this same genre bendifying music that had been done so well with the Acts. It really does help that Casey is a very very capable songwriter, helps even more that he's backed up by extremely capable musicians who assist him in getting his visions to the public. One of these days I will have to listen to all of the EP's when I get the time of course.

Since then he's put out an album named Migrant, this album came out this year and on it Casey really scales back the bombasticity. But thankfully he has enough talent to work with minimalistic approach. There is no concept threading all the songs, instead what we get are individual songs with individual focus. And it does give this open and unrestrained feel about it. The songs are good. I mean they are really good. All the songs are rather hard to define genre-wise, so the best category to use would be indie quite frankly as that is what it is.It is a lot more contemplative album with a more introverted sound to it, and in some cases it sounds more personal with songs like Bring You Down and Shouting at the Rain, the latter one also features an absolutely heartbreaking video. There is a lot more Elbow sounding songs as well, the perfect example of that being Whisper, songs that are sort of geared towards being played with a string quartet and big hearty choruses.

I think it is safe to say that The Dear Hunter have buried themselves into my ear canal and are flatly refusing to leave and I won't be asking them to leave.

Usual Locations Teil Vier: Be'Lakor & The Eternal

My focus-beam will now be aimed at the land known as Fourecks, sorry I mean, Australia. For some reason whenever I think of the music scene in Australia all I can think of is AC/DC, INXS and Kylie. And I've got to say I'm not a big fan of any of those, I might listen to AC/DC but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy an album. But then again, I do listen an awful lot of Nick Cave. So there is that. There does appear to be an awful lot of different music stylings being composed and published down there, but somehow never leave the shore.  These two these two bands that I am going to discuss sound like something else, and while I'd hope that both could gain some monumental success, I'd suspect that the first one would struggle but the second one could easily win people hearts and minds, especially if they continue in the vein of their last album.


First of we'll start with the behemoth(The monster not the band) sounding Be'Lakor. First time I cam across them was when there was a fairly frequent discussion and review requests on Angry Metal Guy's Facebook page. Their description didn't exactly light my fire. Melodic Death Metal. It's a genre I've never really got into, and not for lack of trying. I tried quite a few of the Gothenburg bands that pioneered that style and I just can't get into it, besides maybe Gardenian. But these guys are a bit more special. The first album I listened to was their rather phenomenal 'Of Breath and Bone', which has pretty much got a world wide wholly positive reviews. So I decided to check them out. And boy did it blow me away. Well.... Maybe not at first. These guys have been around since 2004 and were at one point hailed as "Best Unsigned Band in Metal" by MetalSucks. That obliviously isn't true any more but listening to their debut album 'The Frail Tide' I can understand why people were getting excited. On the whole. These guys have melodies in spade. No. They have melody in barge loads.  The amount of times when I've had people in my ear complaining that metal didn't have melody and was just noise, seriously shut the fuck up and put these guys on and then get back to me. Just in the first two songs you've heard enough melodies, enough musical changes and tempo changes that would usually fill 2 albums by lesser bands. One thing that I found brilliant about their music, their last album especially, is that there is this common thread that is woven into every song making the whole album play like it's just one song. After some listens I was going to say that their weak point is their singer, but after a few more listens I realised I was wrong. He growls and shrieks at the right points, often sounding a bit like a Daemon Storyteller, thus lending a certain malevolent air to the whole thing. But seriously though, the intricacy that all member manage to play their respective instruments and weave and wave around each other with apparently very little effort is astounding. Just listen to the beginning of of 'Remnants' there seems to be a near constant guitar solo on the go somewhere in the background which have been turned into main riffs with such an elegant ease. I am aware of other bands that play similar to these guys, and I've given a fair few of them a listen. But none have the both the staying power or the pull-back power for me as these guys do. I always return for more. These guys do deserve every accolade that surely is coming their way. And if more people had sense they'd be touring the world right now.

The Eternal, now these guys have got the sound to make it big. They've been going for a while though admittedly they changed names in 2003 from Cryptal Darkness. Which was the best decision of their career. It would appear that they read Anathema's textbook on "How to Change Your Sound Successfully". They've gone from this rather generic boring Death/Doom/Grindcore and moved, successfully to alternative rock. With a half-way stop at Gothic Metal. I only came across these guys when I was trudging the muddy waters at the Dark Port. Maybe it's no coincidence that these guys have toured with Anathema come to think of it. But yeah, their last album 'When the Circle of Light Begins to Fade' is very much up the Anathema territory. Melodic, slightly meloncholic, and stadium worthy.  They still retain some of the Gothic element, but most of it has been shed away (Thankfully to be honest, generally gothic doesn't float my boat). On the whole they haven't quite reached Anathema's but they're getting there. No doubt about it. I'm not going to spout of that their last album is a classic in the waiting (Unlike Be'Lakor - Of Breath And Bone). But the riffs are there, the singing is there, the production isn't quite there though soundwise it is crystal clear, there just seems to be something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. But until I can I will listen to the album over and over again.

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Usual Locations Deel Drie: It Hurts to be Dead & Promethium

This is part three of the Usual Locations series, which I don't think I'll be running out of material to write. Next I'll probably be writing about some Australian bands. Because the scene over there is really really something special.

Now. Here's the thing. I don't think I would have stumbled across this band through merely browsing. They do defy a little bit of definition, going only under the genre Alternative Rock. The short and sweet of how I came across this band is because the wife of the drummer sent me a friend request on Facebook. And of course being the good wife that she is she regularly puts up updates on when and where they are playing.

Ladies and Gentlemen, It Hurts to be Dead.

These gentlemen hail from Wichita Falls, Texas. Well as I said before they use the term alternative rock to describe their music, which as I said before is appropriate. There is groove and fun to be had, and some aspcets of post-punk also to be enjoyed. Listening to them they wouldn't really be out of place in the early ages of grunge... actually any age of grunge since the age was fairly short-lived. It is fairly obvious that they have been playing for a while, even if not in present form. All seem to be experts on their respective instruments, Kevin Gilmore in particular sounds like his dad was Animal and he raped an octopus. Sean Snyder rather elegently plucks away on the guitar, the guitar playing sounds deceptively simple and gleefully rants into the microphone, his vocal style also on occasions reminded me of Jimmy Pop especially on Macy. Nick Thorntons bass, now if only more bands would show of their bassists like they do here, it is not quite Les "Should have been a guitar player" Claypool style of bass-plucking. I don't know who mixed it but they've left plenty of room for everyone to enjoy themselves to their full potential and no one is stepping on anyone's toes.

Their combination is probably best illustrated in the songs Tragic Part and Macy. The urge to not only tap your feet to the beat but also the table and headbang just a little is nearly overwhelming, and I'd do it if I was home alone with the speakers on full blast but as I'm trying to make sure that everyone sleeps in the house I make do with tapping the floor with a slight to and fro shake of the head while the headphones are plugged in. But the two previously mentioned songs have so far been my favourite by far, but then again I only have a choice of four songs and all of them are great fun to listen to. Which sort of leads to what I find lacking. The fact that there are only 4 songs on Reverbnation. But then again those 4 songs have now made me want to see them in live setting, it's just a shame that there's a whole ocean stopping me from doing so. So it's a minor complaint.

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In my adopted hometown of Lancaster, there is a band that I have been meaning to see for some time but never got the chance. Promethium. One of the great advantages on Reverbnation is that it gives you local charts and these guys have been in the top 10 for a while, but the first time I listened to them I wasn't that impressed. Yeah, they were functional and filled a certain musical hole that was missing in Lancaster. But it was nothing that I hadn't heard before and done better. But since then they've come in leaps and bounds and turned into something more and better. Old school heavy metal in the vain of Iron Maiden, with a modern twist. Generally I cringe whenever I see someone describing their music like that, bit like Lauren Harris or, uuuggh, Sonic Syndicate, I tend to shudder a little bit.

But Promethium delivered that promise, in spades. Under influence they put Iron Maiden, Soylent Green(Dafuq), Lamb of God, Every Time I Die and Soilwork. Now I can hear lots and lots of Iron Maiden and even quite a bit of Swedish Melodic Death Metal. But as for the rest, no.  But to be honest what the musically reminded me the most of were Blaze Bayley first three solo albums.

These guys have decided to give Gary McGohan the centre stage. And boy does he deliver(Actually in some songs he also sounds like Sean Snyder). One of the most powerful singers I've come across, the only thing I would wish he'd lay of are the cookie monster growls, that is probably the only thing he can't do so well, The end of Gunslinger being a good example though Tribute to The Fallen does the cookie monster growl better, but not sure if it is Gary is doing it or someone else. But when he croons and sings he is world class, the semi-ballad Rain is a good song for him to showcase his rather immense talents. That is not to say that the rest of the guys don't deserve it, they do. The harmonized guitar attack is great to listen to and a bit refreshing to hear a band from a small city play with such professional gusto. The emotional breadth of the band is shown again in the song Nothing. Yes I'm a sucker for a good power ballad and Promethium have two of those on show on their Reverbnation playlist.

So next time their playing in Lancaster, I'll be there. Hopefully I'll be joined by plenty of others, because these guys like It Hurts to Be Dead deserve more attention than they're already slowly getting.

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Usual Locations part one: Throwdown Syndicate

Well then, this is a new series. Now I'm going to look a bit more towards the usual suspects of places where you'd find usual music. The reason I decided to write this one was mainly because for the first time(and hopefully not the last) somebody actually wanted be to write about them. So thank you for asking.

Throwdown Syndicate is a band from Washington D.C., they play a variant of Rap Metal, or Ghettometal like they want to call it. I have to admit that as soon as I read the music description my back went up a bit. Metal/Rap. Not usually a mix I'm to fond of. I still remember the Nu-metal days, and those were not good days. But having said that I did have a copy of Limp Bizkit's Significant Other and Linkin Parks Hybrid Theory. Those albums have since gone their merry way of become Two fierce beer coasters. And it certainly didn't help when the first song is called Ghettometal. Thankfully these guys are nothing like the bands I've mentioned. Their a lot closer to Rage Against The Machine and WAR. Probably more the latter than the former. Which is great as I love both bands, RAtM is still close to my heart if only purely through their 'Killing In the Name' song. They've mentioned Bad Brains as a major influence. Now admittedly I've never listened to them, so I can't really comment on that one. But there is aspects of hardcore and punk on display here with plenty of blues and funk thrown in for good measure with thrash riffs spicing the pot. The only other band I could probably mention in the same breath as these guys is Body Count, the main difference being is that Throwdown Syndicate have written better songs and sound like they mean it.

The first two maybe three listens I was a little bit skeptical, but with further listens I've really started to enjoy most of the songs. First of all I have to say that I do love the groovy funk riffs and the fit perfectly with James Reeves vocal style. The problem I am finding with a couple of the songs is that they feel a little half finished. Take for instance the song 'Shaman' it does start of with this rather nice funky riff a la WAR, the drums do this nice little jazz rhythm and the bass. Oh my gods the bass on that song is HUGE! And it feels like it's building up to something, something big, something HUGE! With James spoken word floating on top. Then a guitar solo comes in sort of out of nowhere, and yes the guitar solo is good. This crescendo keeps on coming, but the peak never seems to come. And then the guitar solo fades and the listener is sort of left hanging, wondering what happened.

But then the song 'Shame' aside from the intro samples, that song just rocks. Plain and simple. I can well imagine it being a concert favourite. The riff is brilliant. The drums are again very very groovy and bombastic. The untitled song is another great song, thrashy as fuckery, funky like a gone off cheese, and James seems to be channelling the spirit of Derrick Green. Again here the instruments really do sync together. 'Discontent' is another song I would love to feel in a live setting. James goes straight for the jugular on this one, and does it great.

There are some great ideas being thrown about, some stick while others don't. Most of those that don't could, the ones that don't is the use of samples. James has got a very good voice and sounds very much like he's used to command. This band seems to be very much a labour of love and you can hear that in his earnest vocals and lyrics. He deeply cares about the subjects that he's singing about and that adds an extra layer of enjoyment for the listener. His guitar playing is well played and does some great riffage, and decent solos. His bass playing in some cases though sounds a lot better, and that is saying something. I always love hearing the bass taking a bit more of a centre stage to provide the groove. The drums seem a bit troublesome in the first song and the instruments don't mesh very well on there but it sounds like it would just take more practice to get over than anything else. but after that they seem to pick up the pace and give decent backing to the music, and as I said before on the song Shame and Discontent you can really feel and hear some great rhythms. The drummer Andy Och on the whole is a great choice.

The bottom line I would say is that this is a band that is worth following and see what they do.They've got the ideas, they've got the chops and they've got the attitude.

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