There I am, attending an online press conference Thursday afternoon. I’m sitting in my office, shades drawn, black tea to my right, notebook packed with questions on my left, just waiting for my turn to talk to the woman of the hour, when my cat walks in and yaks all over my floor. Twice. Whatever, that’s what cats do; I think nothing of it. Then over the course of the next day, this continues and worsens until I decide this little dude needs to go to the vet. One checkup later, and I’m back home with my fuzzy homie and instructions to keep her on a bland diet and watch her like a hawk. So proceeds a full night of me sitting up, following my cat around, rubbing her upset stomach, and trying to trick her picky ass into eating some chicken. You have to have something else to do in a situation like this; otherwise, you lose your mind, so to break up the monotony, I’ve been spinning my record of the week, “Under a Hollow Sky” by Capsize.
You know me; when I get hooked on an album, I tend to get stuck on it like stink on a ferret. That little habit has left me feeling particularly qualified to vivisect this one, considering I've heard it enough times to have memorized every intricacy of its sixteen-minute runtime. That being said, I do think it's important that I point out that my knowledge of the hardcore scene has a few blank spots in it. I was an avid follower of this particular subculture up until about 2013, when I first discovered mescaline. Then came mushrooms, then DMT, then ayahuasca, then things really got weird. When you're pumped full of the juice like that, hardcore music is just a bit too angry, so my knowledge of it is mostly concentrated around the 2008-2013 era before I found the spirit molecule. Which happens to work out perfectly, as in a delightful little interview I had with Capsize frontman Daniel Ward, I found out this era is one of the band's main musical inspirations. I think that this shines through most on the EP’s opening track, “The Fracture.”
This little nugget of gold, which also happens to be the first song that was written for the record, is like a time capsule of early 2010s hardcore. I put it on for the first time, and suddenly it was 2011, and I found myself back on the roof of my tiny hometown's only diner smoking ditch weed and watching cars bop on down the street. It’s hard to explain what exactly defines this sound. It has a certain mounting static charge that gives you a chill like the one you get when your hand hovers over a cold metal rail that you just know is going to shock you when you finally take hold of it. It’s one of those things where either you do have it, or you don’t, and Capsize most definitely does.
Now that’s not to say that “Under a Hollow Sky” is stuck in the past, because it’s not. For proof, you need look no further than the second track, “RIPTHEHALO.” This tune acts as sort of a bridge between that pure 2010 hardcore of “The Fracture” and the modern explorative sound of the rest of the EP. It starts off with a synth track that is ripped straight from 2009; I swear it sounds like it was taken straight from “Ocean Eyes.” That riff then bursts into a mutated version of itself that comes ripping out of a lightly distorted guitar. The song then goes on to play with its own time signatures, speeding up and slowing down, starting and stopping, going hard, settling down, and then slapping you across the face with another knockout chorus as soon as you let your guard down.
Something I have to commend Capsize for is their willingness and apparent excitement to let a song go for a run just to see where it ends up. Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute: hardcore is a genre that can be kind of, let’s say, predictable. Much of the time, what you hear in the first ten seconds of a hardcore song is what you’re going to hear for its entirety. Capsize, however, does not fall into this rut. Pick any song at random off the record: “Ember,” “The Scars You Left Are the Only Proof I Existed,” or “RIPTHEHALO”; it doesn’t matter which. You will not find a second of any of these tunes that is quite the same as another, something some other genre bands desperately need to figure out. Daniel said it best when he told me:
Capsize sits somewhere between the hardcore roots we came from, the MySpace-core era that shaped our sound, and the new wave of alternative artists pushing creativity in a fresh direction.
No need to latch onto one era of hardcore, fearing to ever cross out of that niche. A band that is filled with as much dedication and passion as Capsize can’t be contained like that. They have far too much to say.
“Under a Hollow Sky” is available everywhere you can find music streaming now. It’s an EP you’re going to have to hear for yourself, as no matter how much I pick it apart here, you won’t grasp the full scope of what I mean until you’ve heard it. This project was a labor of love. That shines through to such a degree that you can really enjoy it based on that aspect alone. Capsize has been uniting people with their original style and fresh-faced flow for nearly two decades now; you have to hear these vocals to believe them. No doubt “Under a Hollow Sky” is only the latest addition to their long-standing tradition of gratitude, raditude, craftsmanship, and—most importantly—rock-n'-fucking-roll. Do yourself a favor and go check it out now. I promise it will be the best sixteen minutes of your day.
