Ten out of every hundred promo invitations grab me with the first sentence. Maybe two of them will live up to that initial hype. Today’s premiere is from a band whose brand new record did just that. Detach The Islands mix punk sensibilities with frantic, dissonant powerviolence, and panic-inducing mathcore – with a little more emphasis on panic than math. We’ve got one of my favourite tracks from the record for you today, the marvellously manic “Culture Architects”. If you’ve got some demolition to do at work/home/the breakfast buffet, stick this on in the background and let rip.
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Clocking in at a fiery three minutes, “Culture Architects” is a wild one. Maybe even the wildest track on The Burden To Become Fact, the band’s full debut. That first bass riff could grind through the surface of the Earth if you pointed it down, and that’s literally just the first five seconds. Detach The Islands head honcho Emmet Ceglia oversees a fine balance between explosive punk-rock and violent discord; laymen will appreciate the comparisons to The Dillinger Escape Plan but this Brooklyn act is far more direct. The screamo/emoviolence vocals are exactly what you want on top of the churning bass and short, sharp stabs of panic chords. And then there’s the big finale. I got suckered by the short jingle of math-rock before that big riff kicked in and the bottom fell out of my chair. I put the chair back together and then did the exact same thing again.
Ceglia was more than kind enough to spill some words about “Culture Architects” below.
Now surrounded by talented musicans from Juan Bond, Semaphore, and more, Ceglia has turned Detach The Islands from a one-man project into a band with endless potential. The Burden To Become Fact should be right at the top of watchlists worldwide, both personal and government alike. This is some radioactive stuff. Preorder it here, but first, some words from the chief, Emmet Ceglia –
“I ruminate on the integrity of our memories often. Is what we remember what is truly real? Is it more real than what we genuinely experienced when we were present with that moment?”
Lyrically, Dan Kelly and I tackled this one together shortly before he left the band, and it was great to be able to dive in deep with him here.
This song deals with our internal fight to preserve the state of our minds, how the internal struggles we engage in shape us, and trying to maintain conscious control over our experiences. Sometimes we’re resistant or unwilling to face what we’ve been through and try to stop it from changing us, or we obsess over the past and cannot be in the now. In a way we are all living in the past and are in a constant battle over our present and subsequent future with the self we are leaving behind second after minute after day after year.