I take them following me as a challenge.
Post-hardcore is a very… populous
musical genre. Personally, I like it in
concept, but in actual execution, the music is rather unsatisfactory. I’ll like a post-hardcore song here and
there, but many of the bands referring to themselves as such are so painfully
samey and boring that I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for them, and I often
find myself only looking into their songs on YouTube when I’m trying to find
some hilariously dumb sissyfights in the comments (and I’m usually not
disappointed).
I’m pretty sure most of the
vocalists are very similar: some mildly pretty, young, male voice that’s a just
a little too high-pitched (and possibly autotuned a bit) doing the cleans, with
rather weak, inoffensive screams. I
understand that it’s difficult for one man to do both singing and screaming
well, but then I go and listen to something like this to hear it done amazingly well. Heck, a lot of bands just get two different guys,
and they sound fine, even if one often ends up quickly overshadowing the other. There are no restrictions to the genre that
force these bands to all have very similar vocalists, so I have no clue why
they all end up all sounding the same.
Moving on to the
instrumentation… Damn, post-hardcore songs are often really boring instrumentally.
Not that every song needs to have pretty technical/melodic guitars, but
they often need far more than they have.
Their instrumentation is often rather unimpressive: not bad, but just
kind of there. Honestly, the worst part
is they all sound the same! They occasionally get a breakdown in them
(to, break things up, geddit?), but
breakdowns are rather boring musically unless they have something special about
them, like being edited really cleverly or being really heavy/angry (and most
post-hardcore vocal stylings rarely lend themselves well to being really
heavy).
So,
considering how I've just been talking extensively about post-hardcore’s shortcomings,
you guys probably assume that Pyro, Ohio has these problems. You are correct. When you pull up their website,
you get this gem of a passage:
“With
a dynamic sound encompassing alternative, pop-punk, and metal influences, Pyro,
Ohio delivers a unique blend of genres without overstaying their welcome
in any of them. Front man Peter Verity’s vocals soar out of the mix, delivering
a message of passion and perseverance that listeners can easily connect with.
Balancing furious riffs with captivating melodies, the band displays a
disregard for the status quo and provides a perfect emotive complement to
Verity’s vocals.”
Um… no. They sound a
lot like every other post-hardcore band out there to me, sorry. The vocals are meh (screams are kinda awkward
sounding, almost like he’s uncomfortable doing them and the cleans are just
high-pitched enough to be mildly annoying at points), the instrumentation is decent
enough (the opening instrumental part of their song Delusions is probably my favorite bit of it, but most of their other stuff’s kind of
boring. Sometimes they’ll do some pretty
fading guitars in the background, but, again, it’s just the background. They seem like they have some skill in this
area, but it could definitely be implemented in a far more impressive way), but, all in all, it’s just kind of generic and really doesn't grip me the way it should.
The lyrical content seems to be the typical stuff (no
clever metaphors or unique messages here, just a lot of relationshippy stuff,
which can be okay but it’s certainly not unique and I've heard it done much
better in songs by The Neighbourhood).
Though, I swear, they made music videos for their two worst songs, so if
you’re preparing to draw conclusions about them don’t just check out those (like I almost did... gulp). If I had to pick, I probably like Delusions
the most (mostly just for that intro, it sounds like it’s building up to
something cool).
Just to clear everything up, I don’t hate post-hardcore
music, not at all (though, admittedly, it's not a personal favorite of mine). I just think that
there are just so many bands that sound exactly the same, and their sound might’ve
been okay if everyone was trying something different. But they’re not. I can’t tell most of these bands apart just
from listening to them. When these bands
try something a little different, I dunno, have a interesting-sounding vocalist/s,
cool effects on the guitar, heavier sound, use of unique instruments as backup,
I usually end up really loving them. But
this is just meh. Could be better, could
be worse.
However, to give them some mild praise… well, the post-hardcore genre has a lot of
fans. Bands like Pierce the Veil,
Sleeping with Sirens, Falling in Reverse are all mostly interchangeable to elitists
like me but they are very popular. This seems to be of comparable quality to those bands, which I guess can be a high compliment to a new up-and-comer like this, to be compared to some of the genre's "greats". Perhaps Pyro, Ohio has a few
hits in them if you like stuff like that.
I’d rather a new, unique band got a big hit, but I'm not counting on that happening soon. Personally,
I’d recommend listening to something more interesting or more technical. The most unique thing about this is that the music
video for Priorities Lose Company apparently gives people seizures. Cute.
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