Review Summary: When people tell me they can’t imagine / What it’s like to be afraid of my own shadow / I tell them it’s a bit like love
“Chiaroscuro” is a painting term. It refers to the interplay of light and shadow in a painting or woodcut, and is a technique used to create depth and dramatic effect. Its first true master was Da Vinci, although the painters most famously associated with the technique are Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
Living Without, the debut LP by Endless, Nameless, is an album of contrasts—a chiaroscuro in music, if you will. It is an interchange between bright tones and dark depths; a journey across an emotional landscape between the energy of life itself and the quiet corners of our nightmares. Throughout the forty-three minute runtime, the band blurs the lines between genres and styles and defies what is expected of them. Every time you think you have them figured out, Endless, Nameless take a sharp left into territory that challenges the listener to expand their vision and see what the Denver-based quartet are seeing.
The album is firmly rooted in post-hardcore, but uses this base to expand into other territory, such as indie tones, and mathcore. The guitar work, provided by Ricardo Bonilla, rapidly shifts from punk-like riffs to Fall of Troy-esque noodling, and then into deep dissonance, with machine gun-like time signature changes to complement the cacophonous effect that is created. Due to the guitars having a somewhat cleaner tone, bass is actually utilized (and utilized well) by Bradley Thill to create the heavier undertone needed. The mix adds another subtle layer of depth by alternating between bringing the instrumentals sharply into your space and then pushing them out into the distance. The result is a sometimes bouncy, sometimes haunting, always lush dance between musical flexing, rapid-fire passages, and emotional gravitas.
One of the more prevalent examples of this is the stretch between “Cloudburst” and “Remembrance.” “Cloudburst,” starts off as a fast-paced track with one of the best guitar lines of the album, which sounds so effortless it makes you forget the precision work being done to contort the song’s structure. As the song builds though, a sense of dread and burden starts to build, with the band gradually increasing the tension and weight of the moment, which all crashes into a crescendo that hearkens to those moments where our best laid plans all fall apart, and the pain that comes with them.
“Cloudburst” is followed immediately by “Propaniac,” easily the most unhinged song on the album, which schizophrenically mutates itself in way that is almost jarring over the course of five minutes, only to then walk into “A Gradual Unwinding,” which begins with a mesmerizing guitar line that sucks you in until you can’t let go while the song gradually builds into an almost breathtaking release, ending with Reynolds’ soaring voice, which leads directly into “Remembrance,” a track that dips and jumps between soft refrains and wicked aggression. The album moves to-and-fro between melodically engaging and aggressively unsettling, diving into depths of blackness, rising to the sun, and then sliding back into the night.
Attention must be brought to Elle Reynolds’ vocal performance. Aside from her range and control being exceptional, her unique ability to swing back and forth between soothing croons, piercing screams, a spoken voice delivery and even throaty growls is thrilling. Her clean vocals are evocative of grace and beauty, and when her harsh vocals come in it creates that much more impact. It is another example of the chiaroscuro effect this album has, with her voice being a disarmingly soothing spotlight, swallowed by the darkness of her angry screams, as she laments on loss and heartbreak while trying to find hope.
The album, unfortunately, does get held down a little bit by its own weight. The nature of what Endless, Nameless are trying to do unfortunately lends to a bit of an unfocused feeling which is the main pitfall in the journey that is
Living Without. There are rare moments where it seems like they aren’t sure where they are headed within the song and those moments begin to sound a bit like filler.
Honestly, though, it’s a minor gripe. This album accomplishes the sort of thing that Endless, Nameless’ contemporaries constantly strive for but rarely achieve—a balance between aggression, technicality and beauty. Within it all there is the reminder that no matter what is taken from us and no matter how far we may fall, there is always the possibility of clawing our way back into the sunlight.
