HYLI Vol. LVIII - Fireworks and Trivium

Patrick is out on Paternity Leave with his new baby so Thomas is here. Thomas sends Andy something and Andy also sends Thomas something. You know the drill.

Patrick and his beautiful wife Megan had a little baby last Saturday. That is why this is late. No other reason. Maybe he will make an intro-appearance soon to talk about her? Or maybe he wants his privacy and will never mention her again (probably not. That kid tweets about everything). But I’m not gonna spoil it so you all will just have to wait. Tough luck. We have some fun guests scheduled for while Patrick is out on paternity leave. Thomas is this week. He’s been here before. He likes pop-punk remember? Guess what he chose! Enjoy!

Fireworks - Higher Lonely Power

Thomas: If you’re currently a certain type of early-to-mid-‘30s person who was college-aged when No Sleep and Run For Cover Records came of age, Higher Lonely Power may have been, straightforwardly and simply, one of the more anticipated album releases of your lifetime. It’s a matter of plain fact, there for anyone to see. Fireworks went on a hiatus in 2015 — one of many bands of their ilk that opted for stability and structure in their lives rather than continuing to tour 600-cap rooms with questionable-at-best health insurance plans. This, after Gospel and Oh, Common Life were celebrated as creative peaks of their genre in 2011 and 2014, if not really commercially successful ones. The only blip on the radar of that hiatus was a single track release in 2019, accompanied by a promise of a new album — fast forward to January 1st of this year, and Higher Lonely Power shows up by surprise in the first minute of 2023, ending a nine-year drought of Fireworks LPs entering our ears. 

It was worth the wait, it’s worth the weight. The band continues to push the genre envelope forward — the pop-punk of All I Have to Offer Is My Own Confusion is almost completely absent, and why not? That album came out 14 years ago, and Fireworks was an inactive band for more than half that time. Synths, strings, heavily textured drums, heavier and lighter music than we’ve heard from any Fireworks album previously, fuzzy bass, a recurring analyzation of Christianity’s empirical influence, commentary on America’s collapsing social structure (congrats to Pat on his new baby). It’s all here, man. Nice and breezy for you in just 44 quick minutes. How did it used to be so easy?

Andy: I’m suing Thomas and Fireworks for false advertising (Thomas: I actually meant to warn you that there was a false flag mosh track on this album). The opening track is 2 minutes of psudo-hardcore that actually slaps pretty hard. After that, they don’t give half the energy on a single remaining song. Which like, the rest of the album isn’t bad by any means. They just got me all revved up with the first song then had nowhere to take me. Why do that? Do more of the first song. You did it so well!

“Megachurch” is a fun song. It is pretty metal in the sense that the lyrics are basically just shitting on religion the whole time. I’m here for that, and I’m pretty used to it with my genre of choice (Thomas: Andy, you should read this, where the band talks about the Christian metalcore scene’s weirdo influence), so no real notes here. “Funeral Plant” is the most fun song after the opener. I don’t really have much negative to say but I also don’t have a ton to highlight? I guess that is a good thing overall. I don’t know any of Fireworks past catalogue so I can’t really compare it to that.

I’ll add “God Approved Insurance Plan” and “Funeral Plant” to a playlist but I’m not sure I’ll revisit the other songs that much. I wonder what Patrick would think of this.

Trivium - Ascendency

Andy: Thomas is usually pretty easy to pick albums for. Not because he is like…a big metal guy or anything. He is just very clear on what he like (and what he doesn’t) and he’s always down to have fun. He’s down with Dragonforce, what else do you need to know. He has some playlist or something called “Songs That Are Very Good” that just has Trivium’s “Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr” and Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” or something like that. Just those two songs. Weird guy. But like, he loves that Trivium song (as he should, its great) but had never really listened to the full album. Hm. Okay. I’ll fix that.

Back in 2005, when this album dropped, my mom once asked me if I ever listened to a band called Trivium. I thought she was just being a dork (like that time my dad pretended to listen to Disturbed’s “Stupify” as a joke) and was gonna say she was into them or something. My parents and I literally never talked about music but that is an essay for another time (Thomas: Please record this therapy session as a podcast). “Yeah? Why?” I asked. “Oh, my friend’s son is in that band. He’s the singer.” Oh okay mom sure. Just dropping that she plays Tennis or whatever with the mom of the Singer/Guitarist of one of the biggest bands around. Casual. I never met Matt Heafy but my mom knows his mom so we’re basically best friends.

I guess I should talk about the album (Pat adding snark like “please care about this” or something. There I did it for you). Ascendancy is a fantastic metalcore/thrash metal album. Thomas will write about how good "Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr” is. "A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation" and "Like Light to the Flies" also rock. This album and the follow up are really a great encapsulation of the mid-late 2000s thrash/metalcore sound.

Hope You Like all the other songs Thomas.

Thomas: Andy was considerate in this choice (Andy: I always am), an album that I have some familiarity with, which is good because he only asked me if I could do the newsletter 2 days ago (Andy: babies show up pretty quick its hard to plan sometimes). My primary familiarity is with the track “Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr,” which is a song I tried to learn how to play on my guitar in high school (at the same time, I was also very interested in learning how to play Bullet For My Valentine’s “Tears Don’t Fall”). “Martyr" is one of the sickest tracks of all this mid-aughts metal stuff, IMO, and I still listen to it a decent amount. I love how the chorus lyrics are just “pull, harder, strings, martyr.” Who really needs those other words lol they picked the most important ones. This song is on a playlist called “Really Good Tracks” that I started maintaining recently, along with the track “Through The Fire And Flames” by DragonForce and no other songs just yet (Andy: wow I almost nailed it).

Anyway, I listened to the rest of the album and found it serviceable, if a little samey. The run in the middle from “A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation” to “Dying In Your Arms” is the highlight, and I am fairly fond of everything that comes before this stretch as well. I could take or leave the final four songs, based on this first exposure to the full album. I do wish they didn’t do the “hey, hey, hey” thing on that “Trepidation” track — have you guys ever heard of just ending a song? It doesn’t have to be 6 minutes long (Andy: says you). That energy applies on the whole, here — whoever told this band their album should be an hour long rather than like 35 minutes was a bad influence. 

Apple Music has a few bonus tracks, because every album that’s older than like 5 months old must now include bonus content. I didn’t listen to all of them, but I did listen to the “Master of Puppets” cover and guess what? It slaps. “Master of Puppets” is a good ass song. I am going to listen to Kill ‘Em All during leg day today. Thanks Andy!