TONIGHT THE CITY BURNS

As with their other EP from this time, This Is Our Machine and Nothing Can Stop It and the inclusion of "I Capture Castles" therein, 2007's Tonight the City Burns had one track that would eventually end up on their self-titled debut LP (released 2009), "These Riots are Just the Beginning", which is this EP's opener. Crazy guitar and, toward the end, bass tone here. This is classic ASIWYFA, for sure. Next was "The Torch", a haunting, short interlude of sorts (or is it "secretly" the opener?) and... it honestly feels like this was very nearly scrubbed from the internet. Whatever www.eruce.com is, thanks for having it available to simply listen to it. Then we have a very of the time number, "Tonight the City Burns", which has a feeling of early-00s Garage Rock Revival and "3rd-Wave" Emo (or latter-day 2nd-Wave, if that's appropriate). And this is a rare ASIWYFA track with vocals [and not the only one on the album, too]! Apparently said vocalist is Cahir O'Doherty of the band Fighting With Wire. Amazing. Maybe this would appeal to fans of... Delta Sleep? But like, with a more Post-Hardcore flavor. Overall, very uncharacteristic of this band... The middle section is honestly very cool, but hard to say how much this will appeal to the average audience of this site [or of this specific sub-genre]. And it's in the bridge section that we are reminded that this is in fact still Post-Rock. Really not bad. And I would say another solid example of a young band with vision.

"Marching Over the Coals" brings us back to a more traditional Post-Rock reality. Very spacious. But then featuring some... 808 kick drums? I'm off-base, I know it. Anyways, did nothing for me. I'm bored already with the start of "Something More than Power", too, to be honest. I mean, when am I not honest? haha. More vocals, but like... in a Jeff Buckley style? Maybe that will track with someone. The song turned out pretty alright, but I don't need to hear it again haha. Also, couldn't figure out who Neil Hughes was, likely the vocal feature here. More feature mystery ensues on the track with Geoff Topley, "La Plata es el Asesino". Very open track. And a very static, boring track, at that... Hmmm... whatever.

True Rate: 2.5/5.0