letlive. – Fake History

If Los Angeles could scream, it would sound a lot like letlive. This five-piece post-hardcore act from California is grabbing the genre’s creative boundaries by the balls and showing everyone who’s boss.  Not to say that their latest record Fake History is anything groundbreaking by means of the large picture but it speaks volumes of what is to come in a scene which seems to be limited to the same screeching guitar riffs and cloudy unintelligible vocals. Singer Jason Aalon Butler is out to prove that post-hardcore can indeed be artfully done but still pack a punch.

Fake History cleans up the trash that has been left behind by letlive.’s predecessors. Each song is an entity to behold for none of them end the same way as they begin and a great deal of them will inexplicably pop in and out of your head throughout the day. It’s amazing to think that such a full sound is produced from merely five members and that so much variation can occur within an album and still maintain its overall cohesive vision.  If an album starts off with a song called “Le Prologue” you can pretty much guess that it’s going to involve some epic storytelling and equally ambitious musicianship. The tribal drumming intro revs up our energy and cuts in with Butler’s supersonic scream reminding us that this is indeed going to be a hardcore affair. The energy remains static as “The Sick, Sick, 6.8 Billion” claims the throne to the band’s hardcore empire.

But never mind the intensity, what strikes hardest about the band’s third release is the sheer musical brilliance that distinguishes each song from the next as well as the band as a whole to any other in the genre. “Homeless Jazz” kicks off with a jester-like scream that Foxy Shazam’s Eric Nally would be proud of and busts out a beat that even the most idle would be hard resistant to dancing to until breaking down into an acoustic guitar bit that leaves you wondering if it’s still part of the same song. Yet somehow, it works… and wonderfully at that.  For fans of Coheed and Cambria, “Over Being Under” offers a mix of pounding drums and lighter Claudio Sanchez-like vocals that reach their melodic peak at the song’s harmonious chorus. Yet nothing can top “Muther”, the album’s crowning glory. It starts off like any other song, nothing special, but the way that it unwinds in the five minutes and thirty-nine seconds that it lasts will leave you thinking, “What the fuck just happened?!” It’s an impressive work, to say the least. There’s a brief duet with an unknown female vocalist with the strings of an unearthly being thrown in there and if that wasn’t enough, why not introduce a piano solo? The song ends with the words “don’t you cry mama, we’ll be ok” and I think they’re right, they’ll definitely be ok.