Welcome to the working week, rockers! Balsam Grove are a progressive post hardcore outfit, and they just released their debut album called You’re Safe Here on Just Noise Music. It’s currently streaming on their Bandcamp.
You’re Safe Here opens on a delicate piano intro in “Windwaker” that sets the tone for the album before the onslaught of alternating hardcore and metal-style vocals comes to smash the silence on “Brace Yourself!” The song definitely keeps up a hardcore-style to the music, but with a distinctively unconventional beat that’s more indicative of post-hardcore. Then “Break Away” comes in with similarly heavy post hardcore and a combination of clean, sung vocals and hardcore screaming.
“Nostalgia” focuses on some gorgeous finger-picked guitar and some mathy rhythms to create something vaguely screamo-ish. Anyone with a short attention span will appreciate this album having an intermission track called “Asleep in Oceania” which sounds like waves of calming sounds in a new age music sort of way. Then the mathy hardcore stylings of “Sleep Paralysis” come in to break through the calm and bring the record back to life.
“Driftwood” opens on what sounds almost like a reprise of “Asleep in Oceania” and very slowly builds up to a crescendo of post-hardcore power and fury. “Windowpane” is the last track before the outro, and it culminates the album in a powerful barrage of mathy beats and post-hardcore guitars. The album finally ends on a reprise of “Windwaker” which closes the intense album on a note of calm. Post hardcore fans are going to absolutely adore this album.
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Photo courtesy of Balsam Grove
