Random Records with Steve O

After The Fall - Unkind

I wrote about Postage the other day and alluded to my time living in Albany. It also surprised me because it made me realize that I haven’t written about After the Fall on here before. Which is amazing, because I started this whole writing shindig when I was living out there and I can’t believe that I didn’t document this rad band that I was seeing all the time and make everyone listen to them. I discovered After the Fall with 2010’s Eradication. It’s basically the kind of melodic hardcore punk mix that I rave about all the time. Fast, heavy songs, with catchy riffs, some strong licks, memorable sing-alongs, thought-provoking lyrics that flew by in twenty-five minutes. It’s great. Check out “Stagnation” for just one example. But today I’m gonna talk about all twenty-three minutes of 2013’s follow-up Unkind. I was living in Albany between 2012 and 2014, which meant I got to be around when this record was coming together and got to see most (all?) of these songs live. Unkind is an awesome record and got even heavier/faster than its predecessor.

From the opening notes, it's clear Unkind is gonna be intense. But opener “Unkind” is one of the poppier songs here, discounting the opening shout, and the fact it’s about a relationship falling apart. But despite the anger, that pretty much feels present throughout the record, there’s a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel feel, with lines like “Don’t blame yourself for what’s been done / just move forward / and keep pushing on.” And then there’s “Tilburg,” which is … oh shit. It’s about a dead pet. Forget everything I said about lights at the end of the tunnels and things looking up and all that. Everything sucks, everything’s awful. “Tilburg” is actually a good example of the melding of the pop punk influences with all the hardcore elements that are present throughout. It’s kinda poppy, but it’s kinda bludgeoning too, with a sweet little solo to close the song out. There’s a few melodic songs here, like “Back and Forth,” “Cathedral” and “Writer’s Block”, which is an upbeat little ditty about losing motivation.

Elsewhere, songs like “Disunion” reek of that hardcore rage – just listen to the howling “I just want to be a better person than you” – as do tunes like “Wrong,” “Controlled” (a twenty-six second screed that fucking rips), “Double Negative,” “Screwers,” actually, man, most of this record is just fucking unkind. It’s harsh. It’s intense. The down tempo opener of “Wrong” is just a bummer: “We can’t clean up this mess / we can’t save ourselves / when our selfish acts / will always prevent / us from moving forward / or getting ahead”, and even when the pace inevitably picks up, the mood really doesn’t. This theme recurs in a couple songs, starting slow, then accelerating like speed limits are obsolete, like in the equally intense “Double Negative.” I also want to highlight one of my favorite lines are the only ones actually sung (as opposed to furiously shouted in your face) in this song: “But if home is where the heart is / then I suppose / I lost my home / a long long time ago.” Fucking brilliant. “Attention Dependent” calls out the narcissistic and the hardcore rager drops into a downstep that seems perfectly aimed at a Trump era: “You’re attention dependent / and you’re a bad person / you think it’s bad now / it gets worse when you’re at your wit’s end / maybe then you’ll regret / hurtful things that you did / and mean shit that you said.” “Screwers” takes on a similar target and is equally pissed off. Yeah, this is not a happy record.

But then, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel time: album closer “Decade” is an uplifting ode to punk rock and friends, the dedication that goes into being a band for, well, over a decade. When vocalist Mike Moak sings the lines “I’m growing tired and growing old / it pays off one day I’ve been told / And I’ll never forget / a decade that came and went / making noise with my best friends / I’d do it all over again,” you just know that this is the greatest thing in the world. There’s a reason why so many of us consider music to be one of the greatest things in our lives; there’s a reason that cliché “punk rock saved my life” rings true for so many. And that feeling rings particularly true in “Decade.” Unkind may be harrowing and intense and emotionally excruciating on levels, but holy shit, does it give you a meaningful moment to end on, sing-along and all.

Listen to Unkind here. And follow along with After the Fall here. For good measure, you should probably enjoy the rest of the After the Fall discography too.