It's funny how a musical style is able to mutate after the initial bloom comes off its' rose. Take the creature that punk rock has become for example. After the first wave of punk bands crested and receded, in smashed hardcore and that made sense – the latter was a distillation of the former – but the music continued to mutate even further; to date, it is possible to find bands crossbreeding even imaginable genre of music (including – but not limited to – pop, metal, jazz, classic rock, folk, country and blues) with punk and thus creating innumerable hybrids. To put it simply, there are moments (and no small number of them) when the root and spirit of punk has become totally obscured by all the other ideas affixed to it.
Can it still even be called punk at that point? That debate has raged quite a bit lately, and now Our Last Night has thrown in its' two cents by issuing We Will All Evolve.
From the moment “Elephants” kicks open the front doors of Our Last Night's debut, some listeners will be left utterly confused by what they're hearing. By turns, songs like “The Air I Breathe,” “Mouth Machine Gun” and “Across The Ocean” co-mingle strong and unmistakable elements of diaphragm-rupturing metal, Top 40 alt-rock (the pianos that open “The Air I Breathe” are very reminiscent of Coldplay), emo and screamo to arrive at a sound that couldn't really be mistaken for any of those aforementioned genres, but doesn't fall into the punk slot by default either; the taut and lean guitars, bass and drums land it there.
Even with all that put forth though, listeners will still get caught up on some of the misleading hooks laced through the songs (the melodic hooks in “Deceiver” are the sort that most bands treasure, polish and baby, but they seldom cross swords in any particular song because each is from a different genre – metal, emo and punk in this case) because they're just too sharp and will throw listeners for a loop when they shift on a dime. There is no end in sight as “Distance Is Destroying Me” starts out like the best song Yellowcard never before it turns itself inside out and heads directly into Between The Buried And Me territory and the double-kicks that open “Carry Me To Safety” part for some dissonant pop punk power chords. Some listeners will balk at all of this and dismiss Our Last Night's almost reckless veering as sophomoric posturing and that would be easy to see – were it not obviously tight and meticulously assembled.
So what is We Will All Evolve and who are Our Last Night? It would be very difficult to say they're trying to overtly lift anyone's style in particular because, while some bands have come close (Alexisonfire comes to mind), nobody has ever combined such diametrically opposed sounds as these so seamlessly before. With that in mind, Our Last Night may be pioneers of a completely different sub-genre of punk; they're certainly steering a peerless course right now. What's to happen next? Only future releases will reveal what the band's plan will be, but it'll be interesting to find out.
Artist:
www.myspace.com/ourlastnight
Album:
We Will All Evolve is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
