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Montclair
“Two Song Promo” (Ephyra, 2023) & “The Stars Will Look Down Upon Us” (Ephyra, 2022) & “Life in an Afterthought” (2021)

Montclair released, February 21st, 2023, a 2-song promo… and it sounds like sweet, which is awesome! After checking Holy Figures and Feels Like Heaven, let us jump into more Emotional Hardcore. The Sun is out, Spring is here… season of delusions is upon us, right? Can I say that this Emo Hardcore thing, is a thing right now? I see more, and more bands going for this sound. Hey, not complaining! If it is good, give it to me!

As the name says, we have 2 new songs from the guys from Connecticut. Those really emotional choruses where the vocalist drops down to his knees and sings like his life was ending. Well, maybe not like that, but you get the idea.

The first song is a hard one, no doubt! Melodic and truly emotional. The riffs, the whole groove… but it also has a temper. It blows up, it slaps you, it assaults you and steals your heart. It is emotional, right? Nevertheless, it steals your heart in a moment of anger and rage! Perhaps Montclair has more on the Post Hardcore scene than the Emotional Hardcore scene, just maybe. However, it rips. And it made me go back to 2022 and check “The Stars Will Look Down Upon Us”. The formula is more or less the same: melodic chorus, raging lunatics, harmonious ambience, deep emotional ending. It is not a difficult formula to put into practice, with a little thing: you do need to have talent to pull it off without sounding corny and weak (from the musical point of view). Again, it sounds like the 90ies and the 2000s came back and brought their sounds like a bloody tidal wave.

Do not get me wrong, I like it. I find it really nice, and as I said, it was not a genre I used to listen to a lot, but a few recent releases have led me to check it a bit more from today’s perspective. Truth be told, at times it almost sounds like those Pop Punk bands we always associated with High Schools in the USA, and we tended not to enjoy… I guess it is the vocals. They sound too much like a High School student that got his heart broken and decided to start a band. Well… But it sounds cool at times.

“Life In an Afterthought” is more of the same… more High School Pop Punk with the occasional moment of anger and rage and hate towards the football team. Skip it and go back to the “Two Song Promo” and ask yourself what happened. It is the same band, obviously, as they did not evolve that far away from their sound. Even so, I feel they have to be suffering from something truly painful. Their music became a bit more “violent” and “aggressive”, and I like it better that way. That ending in “In Veritas” would never be possible in 2021. Leave the Past behind, and embrace this new persona, lads.

Will be waiting for more tunes to see if they did cut the umbilical cord with High School and embraced their manhood. And please, do not hate me for this perspective on your work. I know nothing about Music, so I just go with emotions.

M O N T C L A I R

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