We Are The Emergency -It's Floating WickerPropelled By Fire

Fri 16th Oct, 2009 in Music Reviews

If a band’s appeal was judged on name alone, We Are The Emergency would have all they need to draw a crowd. It’s a name that conjures, one that builds and breaks the fourth wall, drawing people in. It presses home an advantage that their high-drama screamo already affords them.

With this latest single (recorded locally, unlike their debut EP Seizure, laid down in the USA) We Are The Emergency maintain full intensity while adding glimpses of elements unseen thus far: a borderline disco-beat intro and the massive but all-too-brief – œchoir’ vocal appearing in the last minute. The devil is in the detail and touches like these make all the difference.

What still impresses is the balance and coherence this six-piece band attains. With so much going on, it would only take one or two grandstanders to plunge things into chaos. The multi-vocalist shriek/sing interplay is as close to ideal as a punter can expect. At climactic moments when Ryan Lake ’s screams meld with the clean precision of James Harris and Sophie Rodgers ’ male/female vocal tandem, it’s the best of all worlds.

Likewise, the keys and guitars are seldom at cross-purposes. The range of tones and textures – all of them complementing rather than distracting – is wide but never needless. Brutal distortion, piercing echo-laden lead guitar tapestries, swirling phased-out sound beds, soft-held strums; it’s a thick unity that can be reined in at a second’s notice for those few tense and restrained moments that are a hallmark of the genre.

Suffice to say these guys are doing their job, delivering whatever is needed to let their vocals – the heart of these songs – work to full effect.

Altogether different is b-side You Can’t Spell Universe Without U And I which is essentially a formulaic acoustic commercial ballad. But it is what it is: a heartfelt, plinky-strum teen-weepy, beautifully delivered and very likely to hit the soft spot it aims for. As a flipside, there couldn’t be a better choice for contrast.

WATE are on-par to achieve their screamotic goals.