Review Summary: An excellent starting point and an amazing record in its own right
Polished and poignant with a little vocal flourish. It’s clear from ‘This Is Dead Art…’ that Cassus are well versed in their screamo ancestry. While they may not push the boundaries of the genre to any great extent, it is impressive that they have managed to refine their sound to this extent while still drawing noticeable influence from genre titans.
Raw aggression as personified by the short form work of bands such as Orchid is in no scarcity here. On tracks such as ‘Glitter Is Made Of Plastic’ and ‘Tired of Being Tired?’ Cassus roar out of the gates with no holds barred, spewing breakneck octave riffs. Backing this is an onslaught of battering drums that absolutely boom throughout. However, they also channel Funeral Diner’s slower post-rock influenced passages within the relative brevity of these songs, as is immediately evident in the opener ‘Tablecloth Warfare’. While these slower parts may be shorter than some of their forbearers, tonally they still very much evoke them in my mind. Together these form a potent baseline mix.
Cassus also reach into post-hardcore territory at times. The distinctly cleaner vocals found prominently on the second half of ‘Exchange Rates Are Exactly What They Used To Be’ (and also smattered throughout the rest of the runtime) are relatively unique within screamo. They don’t employ the more traditional spoken word esque stylings found throughout much of the genre, eschewing this for a post-hardcore trade-off between visceral screams and catchy cleans. Thankfully Cassus do not fall into the trap of allowing these cleans to lose an important semblance of grit. Additionally, the sung vocals are quite uniquely British, you can hear the heritage of the group shining throughout and this gives the record a lot of character.
It’s especially important that these vocals both perform and retain a sense of grit as the production on this album is extremely clean. Every instrument sounds sparkly and clear, with a distinct lack of any of the normal screamo recording artifacts. This means there is nothing left to mask or augment the vocals if they had strayed too far into their post-hardcore influences. Cassus manage to navigate this with skill.
Where this album has room to grow is in how ambitious it is. As I said earlier, despite how well executed it is, it doesn’t push boundaries in any particularly meaningful way. It is what it is – an excellent screamo record, but it lacks that final extra flourish of ambition to take it to the next level. On a possible future Cassus release I would like to see a little more diversity in the guitar work. This is not to say that the guitar on this album is uninteresting; it is not. I just see potential within it for a further push that could allow their next work to become something more. This could be accommodated by the expansion of some of the songs to contain a few airier parts and a possible increase in the prominence of the bass. This would allow more complex interlinking with the guitar, something I enjoy greatly in the work of other screamo artists.
‘This Is Dead Art; This Is Dead Time; But We May Still Live Yet’ is an excellent modern screamo record that shows great promise for Cassus in the future. I’d say that it’s certainly one of my favourite records released in this genre over the past few years, and one any screamo fan should set aside a little time to check out.
I'll take short out also
