Wolves At Bay, “Only A Mirror” LP

cover-wolves-at-bayWolves At Bay have a couple great tracks on their Only A Mirror album. “The Night A Forest Grew” and “Only A Mirror” manage to work some great riffs, but the vocals do nothing for me, and it seems like the songs might as well not exist, save for the buzzsaw guitar work.

There’s something about the whole Hot Water Music / Small Brown Bike / et al, underground, post-hardcore sound, that I cannot, for the life of me, ever get into. I know lots of people who derive a lot of pleasure from this music, and get a huge emotional boost from the genre. Personally, while this was exactly what was starting to happen when I was the age for it to grab me — 17, 18, 19 around the late ’90s — I missed it.

The issue is that it’s too mid-tempo. These songs plod along at most times, and rather than building from something quiet to something loud and emotional, most of them flip the paradigm and go from loud, hoarse-throated yelling to a quiet whisper.

Animal Style‘s put out some great records, but this one just isn’t my cup of tea. Their pop-oriented releases usually knock it out of the park — i.e., Mixtapes, Hold Tight, et al — but the other, more emotional bands — Half Hearted Hero, Born Without Bones — are a bit too histrionic and broken-hearted for my tastes.

The vinyl looks good, even if the music on it isn’t my thing. The pressing of 500 — 100 red, 200 purple, and 200 blue — does a great job of matching the jacket art, and the liner notes and lyric sheet have a similar aesthetic (even with a black and white color scheme). If you buy the LP, it comes with a download which includes two bonus acoustic numbers. It’s available from the Animal Style store.