Review Summary: These guys aren't pushing the envelope, they're ripping it apart, setting it on fire, and throwing it into an active volcano.
Post-hardcore is... a touchy genre, to say the least. It's a love-it-or-hate-it sorta thing. And, to be honest, the genre has been lacking in any major releases, and some bands that do try to make a comeback (looking at you, Fall of Troy) end up falling short. It's pretty hard to find a band that stand out. However, every genre, subgenre, and microgenre has an envelope-pusher if you dig deep enough. And with this record, Two Brothers (who are actually three people) prove themselves to be the post-hardcore envelope-pusher, but they're not exactly post-hardcore.
Two Brothers seamlessly intertwines folk, electronic, bluegrass, post-hardcore, progressive rock, math rock, punk, and post-metal throughout the entirety of
Star Thief. Even the first track,
Only an Introduction, transitions from a calming folk track into an electronic track with an acoustic background, to a noise track for the last ten seconds or so. The track after that,
Giving Up The Ghost also shares this idea of changing up the track in a way that feel natural and not forced. It begins with a vocal delivery a la 30 Seconds GO! and Circuit Circuit. It then goes into a clean, almost early Fall of Troy (pre-
Doppelgänger) vocal section, which then sprawls into a screamed section that can only be described as angsty Isis.
Speaking of Isis, this record incorporates lots of ambience and musical space, in a very similar style to Isis, no less. While "ambient post-hardcore-but-not-really-post-hardcore" may sound boring on paper, Two Brothers pulls off this ambience just as effectively as Isis did, which isn't an easy feat.
Two Brothers also constantly switches between feathery-light melodies to heavy screams that would make mathcore fans shiver a little bit. Two back-to-back tracks,
Contrast and
Off Color Acknowledgement, are perfect examples. The former starts with this punky bass intro, before switching to something that almost sounds like Botch. The latter then goes into a Fall of Troy style track, with clean vocals dominating most of the track, while screams come in and steal the spotlight for a while, and then the track switches to an ambient track for almost two and a half minutes to transition into the next track, which is a folky, bluegrassy outro to the project.
This record is a feat of musicianship. Honestly, some of the clean vocals could use some work (the 40-second mark on
This Room, This Floor is a good example), but the instrumentals fit the vocals and the atmosphere perfectly, and each member is extremely proficient musically.
Not every record is perfect, however, and Two Brothers could still use a little work in some areas. Like I said before, some of the vocals could use a little work, but I also wish that more electronic elements were used.
Tired Tongue is a fantastic track that perfectly mashes folk and electronic, yet it only barely passes the 90-second mark, and no other track on the entire project experiments with this style, except for the intro.
To wrap it all up, Two Brothers are trying to stay as far away from being boxed up into a genre as much as possible. And it was a massive success, because in the end, they aren't much of anything. They can't be folk, they can't be bluegrass, they can't be post-hardcore, math rock, punk, post-metal, or anything. This is one of those records that demands a new label, or none at all. And to be honest, I'm fine with no label at all.
