BoySetsFire - While A Nation Sleeps…

Charlie Chaplin was one of the great stars of the silent era of movies, working his way up from a young age through music halls he achieved enormous acclaim at the peak of his career. However, his refusal to move with the swiftly changing times into the world of talkies left him as something of a relic, despite the fact that he went on to make some fine work in the latter stages of his career. What has all this got to do with BoySetsFire then? Well, Chaplin’s career feels neatly analogous to that of the Delaware post-hardcore stalwarts, marked as it is by cult acclaim and a sense that while the genre they work within has become a multi-million dollar industry, they were slightly left behind, leading in their case to an eventual hiatus. Fitting then, that the ever-political quintet have chosen to litter this, their ‘comeback album’ with samples from Chaplin’s brilliant speech from The Great Dictator. Truly one of the most powerful moments in the history of cinema; as eloquent and potent as the band, in their pomp, were.

Pleasingly for fans then, the band have tapped into some of the form that made previous LPs (particularly 2000’s superb ‘After The Eulogy’) such a joy to behold. If you’re looking for steel-tipped rage then it’s here in spades with the blood-spattered ‘Wolves of Babylon’ and the pulsating ‘Everything Went Black’, the latter of which features the sort of electronic tinge you would never have heard on a BoySetsFire record of old but which is well integrated enough that it doesn’t detract from your urge to flip a table over when vocalist Nathan Gray is screaming, seemingly directly into your face, with maniacal abandon. Yet the band’s real strength has always been with their more mellifluous moments and there is plenty to satisfy on that score too. The mellowed guitar tones of ‘Reason to Believe’ give way to a skyscraping chorus which would be a stand out moment if it weren’t surrounded by tracks of comparable power; ‘Closure’, ‘Phone Call’, ‘Never Said’, these are all big BIG tunes.

And of course, it’s political as it ever was, as Chaplin roars ‘YOU ARE NOT MACHINES, YOU ARE NOT CATTLE, YOU ARE MEN’, and the band career into the hot from the fire opening riff of ‘Let it Bleed’, the apoplectic energy of a group who next year will celebrate their twentieth anniversary is palpable. Fucking palpable.

Admittedly, there is probably nothing on ‘While A Nation Sleeps…’ that quite scales the peaks of the their finest works, there is no ‘Rookie’, no ‘My Life in the Knife Trade’ but there are plenty of pulse quickening moments for fans and non-fans alike. Some might find the lyricism a little overwrought but it is possessed of a heart-on-the sleeve quality without which the whole thing would surely falter. Moreover, there are reminders - in the riffs, in the melodies, in the venomous execution - that music of quality never goes (or never should go) out of fashion and that BoySetsFire are as integral to the blueprint of post-hardcore as any band you care to name. Put it this way, the things Chaplin talks about in The Great Dictator: war, inequality, the greed of the few subjugating the needs of the many, are all still as relevant today as they were in 1941 when that film was made. It’s only been seven years since the last BoySetsFire album, so you’d better believe they’ve still got plenty to say.