Artist: Izah
Title: Demo 2008
Type: Demo
Label: Self Released
Perhaps I’m missing something that’s plainly obvious, but really, what the hell is an Izah? Said out loud, it just occurred that it could be a foreign pronunciation of a type of savings account; who knows; perhaps the collapse of the banking industry inspired a bunch of money-grubbing execs to form a band and do something productive with their lives…but that probably didn’t happen I’m guessing; not mucho dinero to be made in metal, and I digress. I was racking my brain here, thinking Izah was some arcane goddess in Greek mythology, or something else that may inspire words to flow, but trips to Google, Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and countless other sites all throw up nada. Again, you know when you turn your house inside out trying to find your keys and then realise that they were in your hand the whole time? You know?
Uh, anyway. Two tracks. 22+ minutes. Izah may still be a demo band but this isn’t simple stuff and this shows they certainly have their collective creative head screwed firmly upon the shoulders. Warmth isn’t an attribute I’d normally apply to hardcore bands, yet it is a word I regularly find myself wanting to use throughout these tracks. ‘Finite Horizon’ instantly comes in and crushes the cortex with ten tons of heaviness; it’s a fairly standard hardcore chug affair that gradually slows as though met by a sludge-like resistance that seems to loop its way around and steadily work its way back into the running. It’s then that the post-rock influences really shine with hypnotic high-pitched guitar melodies that put across a sense of melancholy. Calamitous breakdowns and emotionally rich peaks show Izah combine anger and sorrow effortlessly.
With its screechy harmonics, ‘Crevice’ doesn’t quite do it for me in the same way that the opening track does. The clean vocals on track one disappear altogether and are replaced by intense growls that, combined with the mellowed out shoegazy passages, sound like a precursor to the apocalypse. The hardcore influences are strong in parts here with a blunt, meat fisted approach that could be compared to the likes of Converge while at other times the dirge-like noodling allows for reflection. While this is one of the longest two tracks heard by a demo band, they do have the chops to pull it off without making me want to skip it on after five minutes. That’s sometimes the conundrum with such lengthy tracks; listen to one of the 8/9 minute songs on St. Anger and if you last two minutes you then feel like you’ve heard everything you need to know. Izah have the emotional range and musical dynamism to keep me plugged in. Promising stuff.
http://www.myspace.com/izahband
http://www.izahband.com
Luci Herbert
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