Betterment - 'Defined' (2010)

Betterment - 'Defined' (2010)

*free here*

1) Energy

2) Brotel Rwanda

3) Ded

4) Defined

Betterment is a cool emo/hardcore band from Florida (USA) that has this free EP out and are working on new material as well, to be recorded in April 2011. [As a side note, the new stuff is most like "Ded" on this album]. They have both clean guitars playing chords and distorted guitars putting the hardcore sound in.

They've also got some great vocals, I like them. They're harsh but you can understand a lot of it and hear the emotion in it. The band is tight, they all blend together well and get a great sound. The energy in the music is great - I'm sure they'd be awesome live.

They're showing that it takes a lot more than for some influential bands to break up to take down this genre. And the recording quality is not bad at all and the EP is less than 12 minutes. I actually made a list of my top 80 favorite emo/screamo songs and "Brotel Rwanda" was at 28, just above Cap'n Jazz's "Ooh Do I Love You". I hope that's a testament to just how awesome this band is. They're a fresh listen, and free at that, so definitely worth a listen!

RIYL: Sinaloa, mewithoutYou, Hightide Hotel

Yage - 'Anders Leben!?' (2003)

Yage - 'Anders Leben!?' (2003)

Tracks:

1) We Lost Beauty

2) Ohne Form

3) 128

4) Lange Luegenbeine

5) Anders Leben!?

6) Leben Leben

7) Situations are Like Cells

8) Save the Fear Slave

Yage is a hardcore emo/screamo band from Germany. But unlike some other bands I've heard from Germany that could be called "screamo" (like June Paik, for example), this band isn't as doomy sounding and has more clean vocals. It's like a medium in between Empire! Empire! I Was a Lonely Estate and Saetia if you can imagine it.

Actually, instead of imagining it, just listen to this album or some of the songs off of it that are on Youtube. It's not a long album, and although it can be background music, it's hard to listen to and not notice any of the interplay between drums and guitar. There are parts where there is unison, but there are other parts where the guitarist is playing a riff while the drummer is almost soloing. That's in a lot of hardcore music like this, but this band does it well.

The vocals are tough to describe, they're clean but raspy like Tim Kinsella (of half of all emo bands ever to exist) but when he screams it's more like most screamo bands, where it's not as understandable but it sounds emotional so you don't really care. Anyways, this is a great German band and I wan't expecting to find anything new in them but they were a pleasant surprise, and you'll probably think so too.

RIYL: Saetia, Loma Prieta, Raein