Let me set the scene. It’s Fall of 2004. I just find out my girlfriend of two years had been cheating on me for several months. I’m fucking DEVASTATED. I freak out, go home for some time, and then come back for the start of my second and final year of grad school. I’m essentially an emotional wreck. Having been a skeevy manwhore in high school, I’ve never really had a serious relationship before this one. The closest was a girl 5 years my younger that I paused a Nintendo game to break up with over the phone. So I was wrecked. (I’m not rehashing this whole incident again for those who’ve had to bear with my emo kid caterwauling over the past few years, it’s just to make a point.)
John Berry, of the afforementioned -the jb show-, had lyrics up on his myspace page. I asked him, what are those from. And thus I was introduced to the awesome fury of boy sets fire’s The Day the Sun Went Out
And I’ll remember what you did to me
Lying on your kitchen floor
Burning with hate
I want to rip your hands off
I want to rip your tongue out
For every time I have cried
Every time you have lied
Pushed down
Laughing in my face
Pain I’ve never felt
Hate I’ve never screamed
And I can still remember that fucking look in your eyes
Screaming at me like it doesn’t matter at all
And now eyes will always lie
This was brutal. And it was right where my head was at at the time.
The emotion in the singer’s voice, the pure unadulterated rage and hatred, screaming each word like a prayer of vengeance against this heartbreak. This was frenzied, standing at the top of a hill in a torrential downpour, damning the heavens anger. It’s almost impossible to understand what the man is saying at times. It’s not something you listen to while you’re driving in the car, unless you plan on going Burnout on the other vehicles. But it has a place and a time and that is in the eye of your mournful heartache.
So when jb told me to check out The Casting Out, he described it as a grown-up, slowed down version of boy sets fire. It even features some of the members, definitely the vocalist. So I went and got my hands on their self titled EP.
Mother of God.
This blew me away. At first, it’s impossible to believe it’s the same band. It sounds like a slightly heavier Toad the Wet Sprocket or even Jars of Clay’s The Eleventh Hour
But the most outstanding thing is, they haven’t lost any of the rage of the days of The Day the Sun Went Out. It’s just that they’ve learned to channel it into this more accessible format. I don’t want to give them impression that any of the passion is out, or that this is somehow pussy rock. I mention Jars of Clay because their fervor and Christianity comes through on a rock level, the message riding on their strong musicality, and the passion of the breakup rage is here with The Casting Out. This is a deep, festering passion, that’s merely gotten more distilled. He doesn’t have to shriek anymore, now he’s going to sit outside your house in his car and just watch you. Follow you. This is a serial killer who murders girls who look like the girl that broke his heart, and then sends her pieces of them in the mail.
But they’ve channeled it into something that’s great to listen to. You don’t get that punch in the face rage that you do listening to boy sets fire. This is anthemic. This is your average pop-punk love song ten years later and still smoldering over the ashes of what isn’t. Story of the Year and blink-182 and A Simple Plan, and to a lesser extent Something Corporate and Yellowcard. They’re those high school kids who are crying about losing the girl they dated for four whole months to a guy who just found out after being married for seven years that the son he raised wasn’t his.
And while I’m using this as a breakup metaphor, I need to stress the most important quality. This is a really GOOD album. It’s easily worth a listen to, and I wait with baited breath for a full-length album.
