Everything In Slow Motion is a project whose name fits its sound, in my book. It's the solo project by Shane Ochsner, former vocalist and guitarist of post-metal band Hands. Combining rock and metalcore with atmospheric, post-rock ambiance, this is a project that I've recently come across after discovering Ochsner's previous band, and they've been a great opening to a genre that I've begun to explore and deeply enjoy which has led me to bands like their labelmates, A Hope for Home or Your Memorial.
Phinehas is a band that really stands out among their peers in a genre that tends to lean towards staleness. Metalcore has, for several years, been getting more and more stale, with many bands sounding like each other, to the point where it is sometimes hard to distinguish which bands are which. Ever since their incredible 2011 debut, Thegodmachine -- an instant masterpiece of the genre, up there with Killswitch Engage's Alive or Just Breathing -- Phinehas has been showing the world how good metalcore can be if the bands would write each song as if they were creating a masterpiece of art. Complex guitar and bass work, beautifully encouraging (and sometimes brutally honest) Christian lyrics, thunderous drumming, and incredibly dynamic vocals are always the centerpiece of this band's efforts.
I feel like a major problem in the Body of Believers these days is the fact that they tend to let the world get them down. They tend to say, in essence, "Why try swimming against an impossible tide?". Or, in the case of a psychotic person, "Society has tried its best at raising, and even changing this person. It apparently failed, so why keep trying?". Or worse still, "Society has tried, time and time again, to try to create something good, yet it always fails. So why try to succeed when so many others have failed?"
Note: this is a blog post I wrote on my My Opera blog before they shut the service down, so this is somewhat dated. I wrote it around November or December of 2013. I decided to port it to my new blog because it isn't public on the internet anywhere right now.
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