Passionate vocals and lyrics, ambience and a bit of melody – these are the things that you expect from a screamo/post-hardcore band – and that’s exactly what you get from My Iron Lung. The aforementioned band from San Diego, Calif., are prepared to release a 7″ entitled Grief on September 4 via Pure Noise Records.
Grief opens with a few volume swells and ambient chords in “Broken Holmes” then slowly picks up. In my opinion, “Broken Holmes” is the weakest track, but it’s still a good way to start the EP. From the start of the second track, “Clementine,” to the last few seconds of the final track, which is entitled “Here’s to the Collaborative Effort Made By All Things Under the Sun,” the EP is incredible.
Instrumentally, Grief is pretty calming while the lyrics are powerful and dark and really give you something to think about. My favourite lyrics are “Someday, I’ll get so down / Someday, I’ll get so sad and the bottle won’t fulfill, so I’ll try something harder / Yeah, something that lasts longer that will take away the troubles in my mind, but it felt good the first time / Maybe even the first few times” heard on the third track, “Family Traits,” and “My eyes are closed / My stomach is sick, but it gets so much worse than this” heard on the fourth track, “Late Bloomers, Early Caskets.”
As previously mentioned, the EP gets much stronger after the first track. It’s tough to pick a favourite, but I think that “Family Traits” is the strongest track on the EP – both lyrically and instrumentally. The part from “Family Traits” that I quoted earlier is my favourite part on the entire EP because the song picks up and sounds a little bit like a mix of Redeemer, Defeater and Touché Amoré.
I don’t have too many complaints about My Iron Lung’s new release, Grief. One thing that I would hope for on a future release is a little bit more range in the vocals. The vocals sound great, but there is little to no variance. With that being said, Grief is a fairly short EP that spans just under 14 minutes and the replay value is very high.
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