Cymbals Eat Guitars - …And The Hazy Sea

Staten Island’s Cymbals Eat Guitars burst out of nowhere in the US with their self-released record, ‘Why There Are Mountains’, which features a healthy blend of both the sonic explosions of Modest Mouse and the sprawling melodies of Built To Spill. ‘…And The Hazy Sea’ is the six minute epic that kicks off the record, and guitarist/vocalist Joseph Ferocious (aka Joseph D’Agostino) wastes little time catching the listeners attention with an explosion of screams and sounds setting things off immediately, before the familiar BTS-like guitar line relaxes the dynamics of the track just a bit. But the song is continually unbound by any sense of pretense or structure, sounding like it’s about to go off the rails at any moment, before the melodic keyboards bring some calm before the inevitable storm arises again. It’s unhinged, like a good rock song should be, and brimming with the youthful energy and confidence of a band that has enough bollocks to self-release their debut album in the first place.

The somewhat clandestine lyrics offer little clues to what the song could really be about, other than casually observing the passing landscape as you drive to the point of exhaustion: ‘Will you take the wheel for a while, I’m suddenly real tired’ D’Agostino intones breathlessly. And suddenly the song becomes as exhausted as the subject, as if the band is collectively catching their breath before inflicting another startling eruption of sound, and now no one can possibly think of sleep. ‘Sea’ is a journey within itself, with no set destination or road map-just listen and you’re simply bound to get taken for a ride. This is the formula for the best kind of traveling music, after all, and Cymbals Eat Guitars do this extremely well. And this should serve them well, as the band are destined to make their way to larger and larger audiences all over the world on the strength of their fantastic debut.