Review Summary: Spilling blood and fear and fire with reluctance and ease, we strung him up outside the Blackwood to avoid the police. We fought for my soul.
There is something about pure, unadulterated ferocity that has a way of winning me over almost instantly. In regards to heavy music, albums such as The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Miss Machine and Isis’ Oceanic always sang true to me. They seemed to me so pure in their intent that the heaviness of the music was secondary to the message, as opposed to countless other bands whose heaviness seemed a forced commodity. Most importantly, the music seemed overwhelmingly natural and unforced in its aggressiveness, and such is the case with Boston’s Native Wildlife. The five piece post-hardcore collective creates music that conveys feelings of such longing and despair that it is captivating to say the least, drawing the listener in through intense instrumentation and an undoubtedly epic vocal performance.
Released in October 2012, Native Wildlife’s Blackwood EP is exemplary of all the qualities I listed above, plus a myriad of others. Consisting of just two songs, Blackwood opens with the jangling, reverb laden guitars of Devil’s Daughter, which soon launches effortlessly into an all-encompassing sonic assault of angular distorted guitar chords, a thumping bass, frantic drumming and a strained, throaty yell of a vocal delivery giving us lines such as the poetic “brown eyes never looked so bitter, so lovely, so fierce as when I first saw you at the Blackwood with that wicked company”. It is the juxtaposition of such ferocious delivery and lyrical delicacy that truly sets the EP apart from the pack, contributing to the devastatingly desperate air of despair and regretful longing that envelops the whole recording. Devil’s Daughter soon comes down from its early ferocity and settles into an ambient focussed passage for the final few minutes, acting as a sort of tactical anti-climax before the final track, Bitter Work, begins.
Bitter Work takes of almost instantly after the closing unaccompanied vocals of the previous piece, slowly building over a few repetitions of a simple riff before bringing to the table a ferocity that is a level above that previously heard in Devil’s Daughter. Although not without a momentary, ambient respite, Bitter Work is the sonic embodiment of truly aggressive and emotional post-hardcore. It builds harshly, before settling into the aforementioned quiet, reflective ambient passage and finally rising up again, utilising a moderate tempo and crushing instrumentation to convey a final sense of hopelessness during what is undoubtedly the heaviest moment on the record, which although is not without a small sense of redemption is undoubtedly all enveloping and sums up the mood of the EP perfectly. It’s bleak, desperate and hurting, but with a glimpse of hope that cuts through the despair like a knife.
