Touché Amoré / Pianos Become the Teeth

Two heavyweights in current punk and hardcore circles, Touché Amoré and Pianos Become the Teeth have come together to create an interesting split, to say the least. Touché Amoré open with one of their best songs to date. "Gravity, Metaphorically" starts with the band's usual aggressive sound before sinking into a twinkly guitar break, featuring a very raw vocal performance from Jeremy Bolm. The track ends with Touché Amoré hitting you over the head with a crushing, angst-ridden cacophony of guitars and screaming. However, Pianos Become the Teeth's contribution ("Hiding") is, at best, disappointing. Trading the band's signature, fast-paced, aggressive, dense, post-rock-inspired screamo for something mellower and what's intended to be more emotional, the post-hardcore quintet fail to produce anything aggressive or emotional enough to impact the listener. "Hiding" isn't a terrible song, but it's sub-par in comparison to the band's previous works; instead of emotional screaming mixed with provocative time-signature changes and dynamic structures, as well as sporadic tempo changes, you get consistently mid-tempo music with very little dynamic change. The vocal performance is the most irritating aspect of the song, however. Pianos Become the Teeth have always fiddled with melodrama and this song isn't much of a stretch, still featuring Kyle Durfey's very personal and poignant lyrics, but the "struggle yelling" on this split puts them way over the top.