Review Summary: What screamo means.
The 2020s are undoubtedly the golden age of screamo. The increasing ease of methods to record music combined with the ever increasing dread of the world we live in slowly spiraling into dystopia provides the perfect recipe for many groups, both new and old, to share their pain through their music.
House of the Blood Choir comes from Osaka, Japan, and this five-piece feels like an absolute anomaly with the mastery of the genre on display when Osaka barely has a screamo scene, let alone the whole country. And while it's hard to figure out their exact ages through pictures, they definitely look on the younger side, making their musicianship all the more impressive.
On
Mom's Anxiety, House of the Blood Choir have managed to stitch together something that feels cohesive when the album was a collection of unrelated earlier tracks refined and rerecorded. While the riffs tend to be on the more aggressive emoviolence side, there's plenty of melodies that ooze emotion and parts where they slow down and lean more into midwest emo grooves. Throw in a few blackened riffs sprinkled throughout, and you have a formidable titan. The pervasive anxiety of the world is reflected perfectly as the music ebbs and flows through hopelessness, rage, and a pining for hope, but things spiral for the worse as the last few tracks become notably more dissonant and depressed. While the band is undoubtedly tight, it's the vocalist Hazuki Chigusa that steals the show. I really appreciate female vocalists in screamo; they definitely know how to project their feelings through their screams. Chigusa's harshes sound really pissed off, and she can let out some harrowing wails when the song calls for them. There's even a few clean vocals on a couple of tracks, but they're cleverly ever so slightly off key with the music, hinting that things aren't going as well as it may sound. Chigusa also penned the lyrics of the album, but she is keeping them close to her chest due to how personal they are to her. The only clues we've been given is they're about obsession and contradiction, which come across well enough in the journey the album goes on: a fierce opening that lets up and basks in something comparatively lighter, only for the pain to punch through once more near the end.
This decade is already incredibly stacked for quality screamo, with plenty of albums released being some of the best in the entire genre. I'm blown away as yet another band shows up and makes their mark with an album that may yet become a timeless masterpiece. This is one of the finest blends of what this genre can offer, a cathartic adventure showcasing the perfect portions of pain and passion.
