Review Summary: We've been through this a thousand times, and I'm not tired yet.
It comes with the territory that melodic hardcore rarely wants to make us move so much as it wants to make us feel, but equally rarely is that exemplified so well as it is with Departures’
Death Touches Us, From The Moment We Begin To Love. There are plenty Counterparts out there of course, bands that prefer to strike a balance between aggression and vulnerability, but next to them Departures’ intensely melodic sound is a relief. Their debut,
When Losing Everything Is Everything You Wanted, held a little truer to their hardcore foundation, but
Death Touches Us… sways to middling tempos more than it hurdles through greater ones. At heart it’s a poignant display of the emotional depth melodic hardcore can reach, even if it tamps down the hardcore part in the process.
Death Touches Us… doesn’t have the most varied songwriting (with the exception of instrumental centerpiece “Set Adrift”, every song does the same general set of things), but it also doesn’t need to. It’s a neat collection of tracks that mostly don’t reach beyond or below the two to four minute range, nor does the album crest far past the thirty minute mark. Sure, a little more variety wouldn’t hurt, but these songs are engaging enough to keep from blending together too much. As its mission is to convey deep emotion, it’s integral that these songs succeed. And they do. There isn’t a track you could point to that drops the ball on being an affecting slab of melodic punk, from the pop punk meets utter misery that is “The Last Dance” to climactic closer “Memorial”. Hell, the sound often sounds so melodic and easy on the ears that it comes off more as an amalgam of emo, indie rock, and post rock than anything spawned from hardcore. That being said, the ragged, ever present screams on top keeps it firmly rooted in aggressive music. These vocals carry the emotions of
Death Touches Us… forward without even thinking of stopping, desperate delivery as integral as the heartfelt words of dissolving relationships, tragedy, and fading memories are.
Death Touches Us… wants to be poignant, affecting to the greatest degree, and there’s no doubt it succeeds in this. Every second of its short runtime is almost hobbled by the weight of despair, a despair that could tear down anyone. But it continues on. Maybe with a little driving hope in the back of its mind, maybe just because it doesn’t know what else to do, but it keeps going. Self-pity and a penchant for wallowing in one’s misfortune aside, that’s an admirable thing indeed.
