To Be Gentle
Photo Cred 📷 : @kaymariephoto
The year as a temporal concept is weak. It does little to capture the enormity of what can happen within it. It has become more a measurement than a value system and this is failing us. We are so unmoved by time in this way that we forget how tightly it holds on to us.
To Be Gentle's music is the arm ticking in our minds, this penetrative clatter of gears reminding us of the inevitable march and how it seems to wrap around our very flesh.“It Always Hurts and One Day It Will Win”, comes to us towards the end of the year as time truly begins to blink days away through retreating sunlight while the air tightens as it chills. Flickering strums of twangy chords open the album as “The Crevices In My Head Are Filling With Black Water” exhales ambience only to sharply inhale with a crackling cymbal surging behind wall of sound riffs that feel as though they’re enveloping you, a rising tide of black as pitch sound steadily swells, as I felt it in my gut, then my chest, until I felt it creep up my neck and blur my eye-line into “I Worship What Will Kill Me”. Seamlessly kicking off into urgent and harried guitar work, the first shrieks collide against you as the rise and fall thump of the melodies float and crash into repeated screams of Hell is real / And it rots in my brain.
Switching time signatures and crisscrossing melodic scales foretell the air of sailing straight into an unforgiving storm. The lurch forward of guttural growls and shrapnel blasted screams that begin “It Always Hurts And One Day It Will Win” is not unlike that of rolling, massive swells with the song title serving as the 6th instrument, hanging on top of the track like a piercing a pair of glowing red eyes beneath a turbid murky wave. Ambient, yet dissonantly luscious “We Are All Connected and We All Love You” gives way to “Greenhug”, a more polished version than the version on the 5-way split Worlds Collide (https://thecivilwarinfrance.bandcamp.com/album/worlds-collide) yet still maintains its thematic guitar-work, blended with classic Emo elements and anthemic sonics. “Peace Be Still” calmly strums in with a melancholic yet resolute bassline as the drum kit sinks and strokes into intricate fretwork met with rejoined vocals and blast beats.
To Be Gentle’s capturing of a feeling and time is most present here with that shout to the heavens skywardness of the last half of the track is peak Screamo perfection. I’d be remiss without mentioning the exceptional ambient work that decorates the album, especially on “The Willow Tree In Our Backyard”, a title that bleeds sentimentality and weeps of the past tense in the most painful way possible. Eves’ tranquil guitar-work fuzzes out delicately like a good dream that you dread waking up from. A painting of this stormy wakefulness comes back with “Every Time”, a stolid march that bursts forward with restraint before surging into a triumphantly riff punctuated by almost lullaby-like bass work. Pangs of forgotten memory were awoken in me when “I Have Seen You and I” kicked in serving as the sort of soft intro for album closer “The Love I Have To Give Will Not Die With Me”, an amalgam of all the excellent moments of the 20 plus minutes, it is both inward looking and outwardly cathartic.
Cascading and exploding, every second of this track bleeds pure emotional release from intro to bridge to interlude, all the way to the exultant finale. To Be Gentle have always lived up to their namesake to me. An attempt at trying to show restraint and often failing but with the intention of trying being the important piece. “It Always Hurts and One Day It Wiill Win” marks what I believe to be the 18th release from the band and they have this year alone emulated sprawling and varied experiences across multiple releases.
A year can be incredibly long for people who struggle with their mental health or are steeped in grief. Thankfully it can feel a lot shorter and a lot less lonely with To Be Gentle’s work to accompany us. We look forward to what they will bring us in the next year.
“It Always Hurts and One Day It Will Win” will be out on Zegema Beach Records October 7th.
Check out their Bandcamp here : To Be Gentle
Writer : @letsgetpivotal
Editor : @just_reidz
10/03/22
