***** out of 5 stars
This is not your older brother's Snapcase. This is a patient, mature band, able to prioritize between urgency and clarity. Daryl Taberski deliberately and painstakingly makes his presence felt through his singing with subtle song exposition. In "End Transmission," what the world has is the most impressive album Snapcase has released on Victory Records to date.
Not a response to the backlash amongst their hardcore fan base, "End Transmission" completely overhauls the Snapcase formula while maintaining the passion, intensity and thought-provoking lyrics that structured an entire scene for the past decade. The band continues to tread new ground on each release, not once dropping a dud.
"End Transmission" certainly has its traditional Snapcase fiery rockers: the opening track, "Coagulate," the uplifting "First Word" and the raucous "Aperture," which sounds as if it was off 1997's "Progression Through Unlearning." These songs are enough to satisfy the impatient, unevolving listener and fresh enough to flow in the same vein as the rest of the record.
Guitarists Jon Salemi and Frank Vicario play the biggest roles in the band's new direction. They create unique, patient, thought-out compositions highlighted by droning tones and progressions similar to Far and the Deftones. The guitar work enables Taberski to give the songs more of an apex than previous works, which went all out from start to finish.
Standing out as the best example of the aforementioned progression is the closing number, "Id/Hindsight," which begins with bassist Dustin Perry and then merges into a haunting guitar melody. Taberski soon enters with slight echo as if he was giving a speech to his delegates:
"We were those people/created upon synthetic dreams of economic merit/we are now the pariahs/recreated upon the nostalgia of a future exile."
He speaks, slowly, methodically, building up to a scream and a wall of emotion exploding from each instrument:
"Deny my solitude/deny, deny, deny/I can't make it alone/I admit to you/I can't, I can't, I can't!"
The record does weave a uniting thread to other Snapcase works. The band issues a challenge to listeners to think outside the box, be an individual, and emphasize the humanitarian aspect of living in a materialist world.
These themes resound in the mind for hours, rocking your face off in a way that only Snapcase can.
