Around a month ago we reviewed the latest album from We Miss The Earth, their 2016 release Memory Design. The band caught our eye due to their connection with The Prids, with it being the side project of their bassist Mistina La Fave. Due to our fondness for Memory Design we’ve decided to dig into their previous material and review the rest of them chronologically for the next few days in hopes of introducing more listeners to their sound.
Their first LP is a ten-track released in 2009 entitled A New Silent Era. Already we can see the band’s ingenuity in crafting patches of noise together into something beautiful. Chris Koza has really nailed their identity from the start. Although there’s not a lot of variation in terms of sound design in his usage of drum pads, synths and guitar effects, it’s surprising to see how many song styles there are covered in here, ranging from synthpop, shoegaze, cold wave and even some electronica.
Opening track “Cellmate in Heaven” is synth-heavy, with space undertones and high-concept lyrics while “Pulling My Stitches” is moody and constantly engaged in a swirl of guitar haze. Later, in “Voices in the Dryer” the shoegaze storm becomes more prominent, doing away with the catchy pop dynamics for something more aggressive. “Colossus” follows up with the same fervor, with alarming noises and darkness that puts us smack dab in the middle of a post-punk world. Still very dancy and cool.
Which leads directly into the groovier later tracks like “Reception” and “Life and Limb”. In these tracks Koza makes it apparent that rhythm is just as valuable as arrangement and melodies. Both are dark, brooding and definitive hip shakers. “Kill Cupid” takes this idea and adds in a more sinister veneer – it’s an industrial sounding post-punk tune about heartbreak and losing out on love, a weird inversion on romance that works surprisingly well.
Yet with all these great numbers, the closing track “Silencer” is what definitely takes the cake as the album’s best song. It’s a cut above the rest in terms of arrangement, energy and its density of (mostly heightened) emotions while still managing to be very listenable. A stellar marriage between pop and the harder, darker shades of post-punk. Which — from what we’ve heard so far — is central to We Miss The Earth’s MO.
