Another record from the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year. It says a lot about the variety of records that place stocks that over four Tuesdays I bought records by M Ward, Envy, The Verve and Alexander Tucker; a fairly mixed bag indeed.
The first time I heard of Envy was when they were added to the bill for the Explosions in the Sky All Tomorrows Parties festival. I already had tickets (mostly thanks to the fact The Paper Chase were playing, but also because the rest of the bill was amazing) and I remember reading about them and thinking it would be good to see something a bit heavier that weekend too. And heavier they are. Hardcore varies a lot more than I realised when I first started listening to it, but Envy play the sort of hardcore I really enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Black Flag from time to time, but this hardcore that teeters onto post rock is what I really like.
The sticker on the front calls the record "a juggernaut", which is a pretty apt description (it definitely helped convince me it was a good record to buy that week, the first Envy album I got). The album is unrelenting in its sound. The lyrics are translated into English, but I like the idea of a Japanese guy shouting words I don't understand in the slightest at me (there's something very strange about reading the lyrics to a song sung in a different language. Also the title of the record alone makes me wonder if something got lost in the translation!) Some songs like A Cradle of Arguments and Anxiousness hint more at the sound of their later albums, and it's always nice to see the progression of a band - the songs here vary in length from shorter, older sounding ones like Invisible Thread (a highlight in my opinion) to the longer, more stretched out songs they've been releasing lately. All of them are pretty good!
They were excellent at the festival (another thing that made me buy the LP that day) but I'm yet to see them again. They toured the UK last October, but it was went I was at Fest so I missed them. I hope I get to see them again. There are a few albums of theirs I still don't own; not the most commonly found records, but Spillers has done me pretty well in Envy LPs so far.
Format: 12", a4 insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 19/08/08
Colour: black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
