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Review Summary: Noise Passes, Silence Remains. Yeah, pretty much. Difficult is the genre of post rock. You have to wade through so much crap before striking gold. I suppose that makes it all the more rewarding. I suppose we should thank bands like Final Days Society for making painfully boring, frustratingly unoriginal records like 'Noise Passes Silence Remains'. It makes the struggle a little more worthwhile. But I’m sick of the struggle. I’ll hardly ever review a bad post rock record because they don’t provide me with enough motivation and they’re intensely difficult to sit through. The blunt truth of it, though, is that there’s enough tedious instrumental rock out there for it to be gathered, bottled and sold as a cure for King Kong’s persistent insomnia. Poor guy. Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. Unfortunately for Final Days Society, they’re going to be the one’s sweating under the spotlight.
What convinced me to check them out was their promise of ‘emotional, powerful music’. Their myspace informed me that ‘after the first rehearsal we all knew right away that the music we made was something worth fighting for’. Sounds pretty great, I said. I hastily acquired their debut album, containing ‘9 tracks of emotional and powerful tunes’. It sure is a good thing they’re well stocked up on that emotion and power. You can never get enough emotion or power, oh no. Funny, then, that I was unable to come across barely a hint of emotion or power from the first minute of the album to the agonizingly distant 54th and last. All that was present in between was mind-numbingly tiresome post rock-by-numbers. Reverb-drowned, generic riffs, unimaginative drumming and the type of dreary vocals that will remind you of your dad’s favourite ‘indie’ band. And you know that’s bad.
The firm reluctance to take any risk whatsoever, to impose even the smallest shred of their imagination on the album, is what stops this Swedish quartet from making any sort of emotional or motivational impact on the listener. Take the song “Violent Red”. A cool but uninspired riff obliges an incredulous smile of sorts, weary of what came before, before the song descends rapidly into the same old harmoniously trite crap that infests the bulk of the entire album, save a rare few enjoyable sections. “Let’s Go Again” features an intro you’re sure you’ve heard before, when the guitars come in and things start getting all inspirational and stuff. The melody just sits there idly, twiddling its thumbs, while the vocals breathe over the microphone with a style which longs to be ‘powerful and emotional’ but ends up obnoxious and almost laughable. Especially when coupled with the “we started over, we go again” lyrics.
What it comes down to is how quickly this can be deleted, destroyed, dismantled, any form of destruction, to stop it from ever scathing your eardrums again. I don’t want to be too harsh to Final Days Society. There are moments on “Noise Passes Silence Remains” that had me nodding my head in approval. But moments are not enough. My advice to them would be to drop their singer, take more risks (you will learn from your mistakes), and start completely from scratch, ignoring the templates of other bands, and focusing on forging their own. Right now their music sits somewhere between a poppier Oceansize and a lighter Signal Hill, but with none of the flair, originality, or enjoyableness of either. Underwhelming, drab, achingly boring, the best part of this album is when the silence remains.
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really awesome review. i will be avoiding this
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
It's really weird, I got this from a usually reliable blog which gave it a 5 out of 5. I dunno, I just found it ridiculously boring, even after repeated listens. But hey, I'm right they're wrong.
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......when the silence remains
maybe they'll break up and start a metalcore band called when the silence remains
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
They couldn't do much worse in that genre than they have in this one tbh.
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What convinced me to check them out was their promise of ‘emotional, powerful music’. Their myspace informed me that ‘after the first rehearsal we all knew right away that the music we made was something worth fighting for’. Sounds pretty great, I said. I hastily acquired their debut album, containing ‘9 tracks of emotional and powerful tunes’.
This sounds eerily like a band I just had send me their debut. I hope its better than what you describe here.
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if someone ever described a band to me like that i wouldn't listen.
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
For you, it very well may be. Like I mentioned, the blog where I got it from gave it full marks. But personally, I think it's bollocks. (To EC)This Message Edited On 08.30.08
| | | Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off
It´s funny to see how different we all are in the taste of music. I really like this album, got it a few weeks ago and I´m still not boored with it. In fact It keeps growing the more I listen to it. Scalar Fields and Silence is.. are one of the best song I´ve heard so far this year! 
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
Yeah, different opinions are fun. I hope you didn't neg this because of that though.
This is so bad.
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I thought I wasn't going to like this after seeing you post this review, but when I finally got around to listening to it I actually enjoyed it. Might drop it down to a 3 if I get bored with it quickly, but so far so good. Good review, anyway.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
Wow, this album is great. Got my hands on it only about a week ago but I ´ve been listening to it constant since then. Would be really interesting with a follow up. Killer!
Yeah and a good review aswell, though I totally disagree with your opinions. Keep it up!
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
A really good post-rock blog just recommended this, I don't know what to think  They're Swedish though, so being patriotic, I might give this a chance anyway
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
Meh, I also got it from a great post-rock blog which gave it 5 stars. So who knows, I seem to be alone in my hating of this anyway. Give it a shot, let me know what you think.
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
I thought this was good. Certainly nothing groundbreaking or anything even remotely original in the post-rock circle but at its least it's an uplifting record, which I liked. The vocals are godawful though, like you said.
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I thought this was good. Certainly nothing groundbreaking or anything even remotely original in the post-rock circle but at its least it's an uplifting record, which I liked. The vocals are godawful though, like you said.
I totally agree with this statement, except I didn't think the vocals were as bad as you make them out to be.
| | | Album Rating: 1.5
I know what you're talking about when you say 'uplifting', but for me that aspect was just suffocated in cheese. It's just so 'dad rock' it makes me queasy. It has become more listenable over time, but I can't understand how it be anything more than average though.This Message Edited On 01.08.09
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
This is a lot better than a 1.5 but I can see why it might instill that feeling.... Shame
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