Sleep Waker – Don’t Look at the Moon
Sleep Waker released their debut album ‘Don’t Look at the Moon’ a couple weeks ago and it has really taken hold of me. They had already established themselves with a solid EP last year, but this album should really put them on the map. I expect new listeners to be just as impressed as they were with Currents’ album last year, which is saying a lot. At this point Sleep Waker is perhaps the strongest contender for breakout band of the year.
Essentially they’re a mix of Wage War and old The Plot In You. Yes, that is completely accurate, and it is even better than you’re imagining. The Wage War similarities are in the screams, the breakdowns, and the instrumental styles. I might even start to prefer Sleep Waker after a while because they don’t have any cleans and find more original ways to switch things up. Their attitude is essentially Wage War’s in “The River”, except they sound like that all the time.
The similarities to The Plot In You come in when the vocalist mixes screams with talking, just like Landon used to do when he was expressing pure hate. If you listen to the first AI640 EP (Landon’s side project) you’ll hear a lot of what I mean. It’s a powerful sound and the way Sleep Waker uses it to build up to the deeper screams is next level. Plus it’s always nice to have an emotional outlet other than deep screams.
This album paces itself very well. The first four songs let you know they’re serious about being heavy, the next three dip down into slower sections with an atmosphere that reminds me of Loathe, and then they gradually rise back into the heaviness for the last three. It was a great decision to arrange the songs this way; breaking up the two halves with softer parts lets the listener know they have more to offer and prevents all the songs from blending together.
“Turnaround”, “Eclipse”, and “Broken Teeth” are my favorite heavy songs and the title track, “Don’t Look At The Moon”, is my favorite of the ones that include slower sections.
0 Comments