Stream Trophy Scars' dark, bluesy concept album 'Astral Pariah'
Progressive post-hardcore greats Trophy Scars will release their first album in seven years, Astral Pariah this Friday (9/10), and we’re premiering the full stream ahead of the release. In the aftermath of their landmark 2006 album Alphabet. Alphabets., the NJ band have increasingly been forging their own path, offering up a modern mix of prog, psychedelia, and blues that retains the post-hardcore grit of their early days. It may have been seven years since they last released an album, but time hasn’t passed Trophy Scars by; they just continue to operate at their own pace and write music that’s unlike almost any current rock band.
The first Trophy Scars record to be entirely self-produced and mixed by guitarist John Ferrara, Astral Pariah is a concept album, some of the band’s darkest music yet, and also some of their bluesiest. It lives underneath the “punk” umbrella, but the blues elements hearken back to the acoustic guitar-slinging blues singers of the early/mid 20th century. The concept of the album looks to the past too, as the band explains: “Astral Pariah spans several years during the post-Civil War western expansion. It details the story of a lone gunman dedicated to wiping out his entire blood line with calculated vengeance. Point of view narratives switch between family members throughout the album as each one meets their sorry fate.”
Vocalist Jerry Jones adds, “Astral Pariah might be our darkest record but it’s our favorite. It was just so much fun to design. The entire process showed us what’s possible when building songs in the studio versus writing them wholly in a live practice setting (which is how we usually write). It was satisfying to see something that we first wrote as a short story manifest into a fully cinematic experience. We loved playing with the dynamics and rhythms a lot more on this one. We wanted to make the feel both intimate but also massive. The album’s story takes place in the Holy Vacants universe but it isn’t necessary to understand that. This is a peripheral prequel, if that makes sense. There are some lyrical easter eggs here and there but mostly this story is about a bad guy killing bad people. That was a bunch of fun to write too.”
Pre-order the album at Bandcamp and stream it below…
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15 Albums That Shaped Progressive Post-Hardcore in the 2000s
The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003)
Coheed & Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003)
These Arms Are Snakes – Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home (2004)
The Sound of Animals Fighting – Tiger and the Duke (2005)
The Receiving End of Sirens – Between the Heart and the Synapse (2005)
Gospel – The Moon Is A Cold Dead World (2005)
The Number Twelve Looks Like You – Nuclear. Sad. Nuclear (2005)
The Fall of Troy – Doppelgänger (2005)
Protest The Hero – Kezia (2005)
Fear Before The March of Flames – The Always Open Mouth (2006)
Damiera – M(US)IC (2007)
Circa Survive – On Letting Go (2007)
Dance Gavin Dance – Dance Gavin Dance (2008)
2000s progressive post-hardcore was kind of the result of a bunch of different post-hardcore bands trying their hands at progressive rock all at once. A lot of these bands ended up collaborating and touring together, but it took a few years for this to seem like a coherent subgenre. When the next wave of progressive post-hardcore bands cropped up at the turn of the 2010s, they very much had a specific shared sound in mind. That sound got dubbed "swancore," and the person who coined it was Dance Gavin Dance guitarist (and Blue Swan Records founder) Will Swan. Dance Gavin Dance served as the direct bridge between the early 2000s bands and the 2010s bands (many of whom were signed to Blue Swan). They took the influence of a lot of the earlier bands on this list and they bottled it up and stirred it around until it sounded like an accessible blend of just about all of them. Their self-titled sophomore LP is their second album and first with clean vocalist Kurt Travis (who would go on to front A Lot Like Birds and also has a band with The Fall of Troy frontman Thomas Erak, among many other projects), following their 2007 debut with now-controversial vocalist Jonny Craig. Kurt's a real wailer who can sometimes sound like a cross between Anthony Green and Casey Crescenzo, and Will Swan's mind-melting riffage exists somewhere in the middle ground between The Fall of Troy and The Mars Volta. Sometimes prog bands get a little too polished, and DGD definitely flirt with the cleaner side of the genre, but they keep things gnarly thanks to screamer Jon Mess, who clearly learned his screaming chops from '90s screamo and splits vocal duties almost 50/50 with Kurt on this LP. (They also had some guest vocalists on this album, including none other than Deftones frontman Chino Moreno.) When this album first came out, it might've seemed like a product of its influences, but at this point, DGD have become a highly influential (and long-lasting and consistent) band themselves, and this decade-plus-old sophomore LP still holds up.
Exclusive, limited Dance Gavin Dance vinyl variants available in our shop.