Review Summary: ‘The Lack Long After’ is an intense and confronting album with such prevalent emotion to make the listener feel everything and anything at once.
Those who are new to this album and band may wonder what makes this album so special. Many bands within this genre have displayed intense emotion and honesty within their music to captivate their listeners and connect with them on a personal level (To name a few: La Dispute, The Saddest Landscape, Being as an Ocean). What makes this band any different?
I personally feel this band takes this to the next level with all of the music they play. However, when speaking with their bassist, Zac Sewell, about his favourite of the band’s material, he said it was this album for the reason that they truly put a lot of themselves into its culmination. It was made to connect with people. It was made to be cherished by any who would give it the time and care that the bands themselves put into it.
This connection is clearly seen amongst all members’ contributions the sound of the album. The sound is distant yet confronting. It is quiet and loud. It is angry, stressed, happy, grateful, regretful, distressed, thoughtful, empathetic, all at once. The lead vocalist, Kyle Durfey, has a style of spontaneously changing from singing to screaming to yelling to talking, all while sounding so delicate and fragile. His vocals remind the listener of the likes of Jordan Dreyer from La Dispute. Guitarists Mike York and Chad McDonald lay both clean and distorted chord progressions and riffs that mould together well to create a pleasant contrast to listen to, particularly present in the song ‘Good Times’.
Bassist Zac Sewell doesn’t particularly stand out playing-wise in the album, but provides great backup vocals and delivers rhythmic and modest bass lines to accompany the guitars. Lastly, drummer David Haik provides another highlight of the album with the energetic and varying styles of drumming he displays in each song.
The recurring theme throughout the album comes across as regret, or dealing with the past. This is shown in tracks like ‘Liquid Confidence’, a song about recalling the events preceding a funeral or ‘Good Times’, a song about recalling good times that have occurred in the past with lyrics such as “But losing you, I learned to lose my youth, lose my spirit, and now I can’t hear it anymore, And I guess that’s life”. Lastly, another lyric from perhaps their most well know song ‘I’ll Get By’, encapsulates the honesty and sincerity present in all the lyrics on the album: “I used to listen to my life, I was so put together, I chose what I wanted to be, in that age of chasing sand”.
‘The Lack Long After’ is a truly emotional album from a band whose unmatched sincerity and passion makes them one of the leading post-hardcore bands today. There are certainly a lot more exciting things to come from this band’s career if this album is any indication of it. Those who embrace and connect with the album will remember it for much longer after, an experience that lacks nearly nothing at all.
Recommended Tracks:
All of them
Personal Favourites:
I’ll Get By
I’ll Be Damned
Good Times
