Envy
A Dead Sinking Story
Level Plane
This new release from Japan’s Envy is one of the most considered and crafted hardcore albums you’re likely to hear in a good while. A Dead Sinking Story is a one-hour plus journey through emotional and panoramic rock music. Somewhat similar to Isis in tone and ambience, such lazy cross-referencing fails to take into account the unique voices of both bands and the different approaches to getting their points across. Envy sing in Japanese (the lyric sheet includes English translations), but what shines through is the band’s ability to translate emotions into truly touching, hypnotic music. Envy’s music relies heavily on complex song structures, and their less dynamically challenging songs fall short of their finest moments on here – “Go Mad and Mark” being one particular example. But for its main duration, this is a wildly ambitious and breathtakingly beautiful album, best enjoyed as one single entity, and certainly worth the extra couple of spins it might take you to wring your head around it.
Level Plane: http://www.level-plane.com/
