Lives born of skate and punk
For those of us who have skated at Pier 62, Angus and Duncan McGillivray-Smith were total fixtures. A little bit of their brilliance is captured here:
Brethren. from Kyle Matthew Hamilton on Vimeo.
I was really saddened to hear of Angus’s recent death. As a person who grew up going on skate adventures with my own brother, it is hard for me to imagine losing my brother, especially at such a young age. My condolences go out to Duncan and the McGillivray-Smith family.
One of my favorite screamo bands of all time is Tokyo, Japan’s Envy. The band has been around for a long time (1992!) and were forerunners of epic, emotional post-hardcore. I place them alongside Saetia in terms of influence: whereas a lot of the guitar and vocal sounds were innovated by Saetia, Envy really mastered the rollercoaster-ride composition that’s so important to this genre.
I was super-excited to discover this incredible full set video of Envy performing in Hong Kong back in 2015:
It’s kind of ridiculous the kind of documentation that now exists for live shows, and this set is meticulously captured.
There’s a new Modern Life Is War EP out on Deathwish. Their 2005 album Witness is an amazing work, so I was pretty excited to check out this first release in a long time. Jeff Eaton’s vocals are as great as ever. The music is more rock oriented than previous releases, but the title single Feels Like End Times is a pretty powerful song. The B-Side, Lonesome Valley Ammunitions, is a song that I am still figuring out if I like… it’s a bit weird!
There’s a video for Feels Like End Times that was released with the EP:
I like the color coordination here, but there’s not a lot going on in this video substance-wise, which is particularly unfortunate given the great content of the song’s lyrics.