Back when I was doing NCA, I used to listen to bands that primarily fell under the “hardcore punk” banner, meaning they’d go from a straight up hardcore to something metal, and my punk went all the way over to pop punk even. A few years passed in between NCA and this, and somewhere along the line I feel like music changed drastically.
Some could say that I got older and thus I changed, but I say that while it may be part of the case I also feel like the music has changed with me. Now the music I’m hearing is under that “indie rock” banner that tends to have a lot of bands wanting to sound like the Flaming Lips. Long gone are the days of seeing shows with lineups such as Grade/Bane/The Hope Conspiracy/The Dedication.
One of the biggest problems I’ve realized too is that so much music came out in that general “hardcore” label that it eventually came to the point where new bands struggled to find their way because I would just lump them in as sounding like an existing band. Well, I think it’s been long enough and change is due for the pendulum to swing around once again and introduce a new crop of bands that can celebrate the music I once focused the majority of my reviews on.
On a side note though, I do believe of what has changed came from within the music scene itself more so than me because, well, a lot of the record labels that I used to look to for good hardcore bands (And I will not name names unless prompted, haha) are now home to, well, many bands that are really anything but hardcore.
Big Black Cloud delivers a much needed kick to the ass of a stale music scene that needs to thrive again. Remember in Fight Club how being hit can make you stronger? Well, Big Black Cloud is beating down all of the other bands so that they may rise and come back better than ever before.
Big Black Cloud (which is one of the truly great band names I’ve heard in a long while) comes out swinging on their first track, mixing up sounds like Refused with Q and Not U. I’d like to call this Mates of State meets Future of the Left, but I am not that bold.
Yes, there are male and female vocals taking turns in some of these songs, but they come on so powerful and the music is just that you don’t really tend to notice “Oh, a girl is singing now” or vice versa. Sometimes bands like to slow down and set the mood for female vocals to chime in, but Big Black Cloud does some seamlessly, never missing a beat.
Never shying away from the artcore that I love, Big Black Cloud is also not afraid to let loose an instrumental song, which still somehow manages to break down doors of much needed hardcore music in my life.
` I’ve heard a good number of hardcore bands in my time that changed my life the first time that I heard them. While I’d like to compare hearing Big Black Cloud for the first time to the first time I heard The Hope Conspiracy, Bane, Grade, The Dedication, Strike Anywhere, Reach the Sky, Sex Position and so on and so forth, I really just see this as a huge eye opening experience that will hopefully one day soon leave me comparing other bands to the first time I heard Big Black Cloud.
You see, it may not feel like I was reviewing a lot of hardcore bands lately because I stopped listening to them and I changed, but that is simply not true. I was still listening to hardcore bands but most of them left me yearning for the older days and realizing that perhaps hardcore had its run ten years ago and before. Sometimes it just takes that one band to spark an interest in that scene again. It may not be Big Black Cloud for you, but it most definitely is Big Black Cloud for me.
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