Counterparts- You’re Not You Anymore
Last year Counterparts released their 5th album ‘You’re Not You Anymore’ and although it didn’t live up to ‘Tragedy Will Find Us’ it was still top 20 material. I’m splitting this review into positive and negative parts because this is a really great album and I don’t want to put too much emphasis on my critiques because I know that I’m holding this album to a really high standard.
The positives: Counterparts has been around for a while and it seems like their popularity doubles each time they release an album. I think it’s because they sound like they would be an underground band and people latch onto them as if they were the first to discover them. If you’re a new listener I highly recommend their previous material. They don’t sound radically different but they have evolved over time in a great way.
People will probably argue over what genre they are but I consider them to be one of the best bands to mix melodic hardcore with metalcore. A simpler way of imagining their sound is thinking about what it would sound like if a pop punk band was heavy. They have one of the best heartfelt, emotional sounds I’ve heard and it really gets your feelings going. It’s the type of stuff that makes you think about life as you’re driving home late at night.
A signature element of Counterparts that I hope never disappears is the combo of fast vocals/fast instruments. One of my favorite things is how the yells during the fast parts build up the song and when the breakdowns hit he switches to the deeper screams (a great example of this is comparing the start of “Bouquet to the end of “Rope”).
The negatives: This is a short album (under 28 minutes) and it didn’t suck me in the way other albums have. Keep in mind I’m being super critical here; it was a great album and I listened to it a bunch, it’s just that ‘Tragedy Will Find Us’ is one of my favorite albums in recent years so this one had a lot to live up to and that’s what I’m comparing it to.
The songs in ‘YNYA’ are just a little less engaging and a little less meaningful. The result is an album that sounds like a bunch of b-side tracks from the last release. Basically I wouldn’t pick any of these songs over songs from ‘TWFU’; they don’t have the same catchy quality. Think about songs like “Solace”, “Collapse”, and “Choke”…there weren’t any of those songs on this album for me except maybe “Rope”.
After listening to the albums side by side I figured out why this album comes off as weaker to me. ‘TWFU’ explored the softness and the heaviness of the band way more than ‘YNYA’; it covered a wider range of their sound and wasn’t as predictable. ‘YNYA’ has much less variation, much less ebb and flow. Normally I’m all for a band being intense as often as possible but Counterparts thrives when they go for a more volatile sound. I love ‘TWFU’ because it sounds like the way it makes me feel: contemplative and open to embracing sadness because I’m happy to be alive and experiencing the things I do, even if it’s not all positive. Maybe I’m at a different point in my life right now but ‘YNYA’ doesn’t tap into my feelings the same way.
A complaint that shouldn’t be a complaint: the vocalist, Brendan Murphy, has a side project called End that put out an amazing EP. It’s kind of like Counterparts but heavier and more chaotic. I listened to that even more than I listened to this album and I think my excitement over the new territory he’s exploring in that band affected how much I liked this album.
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