I Would Set Myself On Fire For You
Believes In Patterns
( Stickfigure ) 2006

So you've got an attention grabbing name, a live string section [Lindsey Harbour plays viola+] and you wanna be hardcore. Will it work? Can it work? Could the cool kids in the skin tight blacker that midnight blind black AA tees latch on.. .?

Certainly, if you are I Would Set Myself On Fire For You - a crew of musical inventors from Atlanta, Georgia who self-label themselves as Screamo / Post Hardcore / Experimental.

Chemically crossbred on what should be understood as an evening of the most intense lunar-interstellar co0rdinance, I Would etc. have one inclined hand clinched around the strained neck of hardcore and many sets of nimble fingers aimed at redefining a genre that has bottomed itself out. This, listeners, is not your common anycore - Believes In Patterns is a restructured guide book that should be handed out on the first day of school... Everywhere, USA.

Courageously forging along likened paths previously ventured by core patriarchs Between the Buried and Me, Envy and KYLESA - I Would etc. are self-prescribing antibiotics [ie: themselves] to a scene they obviously have diagnosed as ill. Tracks can vary from the two minute swirl of "Let the Jazz Band in" on to a progressive build like the seven minute "Three" - the later dissecting sampled voices / recordings that would satisfy fans of Dreamend [see also: "Terrible Noise"]. The band fleshes many of these hardcore/classical compositions out to extend and retract - swell and contract - in patterns you just don't hear in music today [yes, those are horns on "Let the Jazz Band in"]. Effective male vocals that intensify and lash are met with delicate female harmony as instruments are beaten and caressed then sent to bed without supper. Believes In Patterns - yes. There are the few leaders and then there are the legions of followers - I Would Set Myself On Fire For You obviously aren't interested in traveling behind anyone. Torches held high - journey on.

kaleb :: August 2006