Review Summary: Your purple light recedes into the arctic
Let’s forget about genres and classing music just for a moment. For a long time, I have seen music as a form of communication/expression/emotion that is a universal language we can all relate to in some way or another. If you take any piece out there and put it on paper (notation) you find all music is the same! Notes! The beauty of this is you can take any instrument and communicate it as classical, metal, hip hop, electronic... the list goes on. With this in mind let’s get stuck into reviewing “you appear alongside me”.
The first track on this EP is named Predation and kicks off with a beautiful clean melancholy guitar intro backed by high haunting bass notes. For some reason I picture in my mind sitting on a train looking out the window knowing that there is going to be a huge train wreck coming and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. And sure enough when the distorted guitars, drums, vocals and chunky bass drop in it sounds like havoc. Chaotic and melodic with touches of rocking out Predation is a great introduction to the rest of the EP.
The vocals are harsh and crying out to you to empathise with the bands feelings. The vocals aren’t monotonous and do vary in pitch here and there. The most soul touching track on the EP would be “the valleys fill with lavender” which is related to suicide. The lyrics throughout the album have moments of poetic beauty with lines like “I wish cicadas clung onto street lamps instead of your throat”, “stop planting dead doves in my pockets” and “looking for weakness to pin on one another we were in love and we hated each other”.
This EP by Voyage in Coma has it all, soft beautiful quiet moments as well as fast paced chaotic yet somewhat melodic parts. It’s quite obvious that this band knows how to really let out how they feel through their music. Is this a means of escape or a way to deal with what life/death throws at us? Is music not life?
