The Absent Trail of an Echo and My Future Plagued by Surrender: [Soundcloud] Union of Snakes

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

[Soundcloud] Union of Snakes - Vol. 2.5 [2012]

I always whine about the availability of Japanese stuffs on the internet. Bandcamp is so good, every band should have a Bandcamp and put their songs up there. Maybe someday Bandcamp will roll out a Japanese language interface and bands will flock to it like they eventually did with Myspace. See, EVERY Japanese band has a Myspace now, whereas this was almost unheard of back in 2002. So, hopefully times are a-changing. In the meantime, however, there are a few stand-outs that are taking advantage of what the internet has to offer.

Enter Union of Snakes. Before I talk about the music, let's marvel at the forward-thinking tech-saviness this band is displaying. Their site is on Tumblr. They post their demos on SoundCloud. And they also post their demos for download on Mediafire. I love these guys! You had me at hello...

With all their tech cred, it's even better that these guys make great music. Each Volume has its own sound, but I've listened to Volume 2 the most. It feels heavily influenced by that late 90's San Diego screamo sound, which was brought to Japan and expanded upon by greats like The Carnival of Dark-Split and There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. Union of Snakes plays it good and close to that sound, sounding more like something 10 years ago than today. But that is good! They play the sound uniquely, with more modern sensibilities (less Unbroken influence, I mean), and do it so well. It's just got this great, dark, brooding sound with shouted and sung vocals. I can't vouch for the other two volumes, but Volume 2 is definitely worth picking up. They just released Vol. 2.5 a few weeks ago, so it looks like I've got some jams to listen to.

A vid of one of my favorite songs from them: