9/12/2023 0 Comments Touche amore houston![]() He did the same for Touché Amoré here, scaling back the bleary emotional fog that hung over their prior album and presenting the band at its leanest and most ferocious, so that each snare crack, guitar riff, and vocal take lands with visceral force. Not that he was exactly vague about his feelings on Stage Four, but Bolm may be particularly focused on clear communication this time around due to the influence of Ross Robinson, the veteran producer known for drawing a thunderous sonic violence out of everyone from nu-metal pioneers Korn and Slipknot to this band’s post-hardcore forebears At The Drive-In and Blood Brothers. “I talk myself out of myself/ When I’m overwhelmed,” he confesses on “Reminders.” “Is there a way to feel free/ Without being someone else?” As “Feign” shifts into high gear, he howls, “I say the wrong thing at the perfect time!” On the blistering album opener “Come Heroine,” with Trapped Under Ice and Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp in tow, Bolm expresses gratitude for a woman who helped show him the way forward, but not without self-deprecation: “And I’m just a risk/ A colossal near miss/ Prone to resist what is best for me.” He even shouts out the depressive Counting Crows classic “Round Here” as “an almost perfect song” on “Exit Row,” as if to accentuate what pervasive adversaries his sadness and defeatism have become. Bolm had to fight hard for whatever healing he’s experienced, and you can hear that struggle in every track. ![]() That’s true to a point, but the album is not exactly a pivot to optimism. Lament is billed as the light at the end of that tunnel, the sound of Touché Amoré finding some kind of hope in this world. “I asked your god, ‘How could you?!’ but never heard an answer.” Elsewhere he turned that accusatory finger back at himself: “She passed away about an hour ago/ While you were onstage living the dream.” Bolm’s brutally honest reflections played like a tour through the many kinds of darkness that can arise when a loved one dies, lending new depth and power to an already formidable band. “You died at 69 with a body full of cancer,” he railed at one point. As his bandmates continued to hone in on a sweet spot between careening full-speed-ahead punk and grand post-rock atmospherics, Bolm poured his heart out with uncommon urgency. It was a devastating, enthralling record, heavy in every sense. Four years ago, on the Los Angeles band’s harrowing career pinnacle Stage Four, Bolm addressed a subject worthy of all his ardor and severity: His mother’s death from cancer and the grief that followed. As he himself admits at the peak of “Savoring,” one of Lament‘s most intense tracks: “I’ve never been too subtle!” Bolm interrogates his own neuroses a lot on these fiery new songs, and he rarely leaves us guessing about where his head’s at. “Been a faulty poet, a personal arsonist/ A last responder to my own self interest,” he self-analyzes on “Deflector,” an early taste of Touché Amoré’s new album Lament that emerged more than a year ago. The genre tends toward heart-on-sleeve sloganeering that renders a singer’s interior life in biting, memorable outbursts, and Bolm supplies them in abundance. With Touché Amoré, he traffics in a harsh, combustible form of post-hardcore in which emotions run hot and melodrama is a renewable resource. Seems to me Bolm’s intentions usually come through loud and clear. “But even with this silence, my voice can be misheard.” “It’s that special kind of quiet where one might be concerned,” sings Jeremy Bolm in a softened version of his blunt, frantic bark. Weeping pedal steel wafts upward over distant acoustic strums. ![]() Soft guitar chords ripple with tremolo then vanish. Check out the dates below to see if they’re coming near you.“A Broadcast” begins with a rare moment of respite on a Touché Amoré album. Support will be coming from Single Mothers and Gouge Away. Post-hardcore band Touche Amore has announced North American tour dates set to take place this fall.
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