bulletsbetweentongues - Fragility

When I saw bulletsbetweentongues in Pittsburgh earlier this year, two goons fistfought in the pit for real. The bar owner stormed downstairs and turned the lights on, cutting off the show early. Shame, because that was probably one of my favorite screamo sets I had ever seen, up there with Gillian Carter at Preserving Underground and Hundreds of AU at Flemington DIY. That room had a really good sound for a bar basement on Pittsburgh's south side. I was particularly impressed by the control and intensity of their vocals. Anyway, these guys are breaking up, so I might as well chase some clicks for once.

bulletsbetweentongues are a Texas band that rides the line between metallic hardcore and forum screamo. As such, there's a lot of songs about being betrayed, disappointed, and knocked around. There's also a recurring theme of faith and religion. "Luxuria", religious faith is tied up with romantic fidelity. "My Dearest Faith" is a literal woman. The riffs there show off what might be some Unearth influence, and then mutate into something far more screamo on "Bleed the Vein". There's plenty of dueling guitar work on "Severance" as well, which might be the heaviest track on the record. The first riff on "Sparks Will Fly" also deserves a mention as a high quality metallic hardcore revival riff, and the use of semi-clean guitar on the chorus riff is an excellent example of how they fuse metallic hardcore and screamo - they use the hardcore structure and drum patterns, screamo vocals, and a mix of the two for guitar riffs. Closer "Inferno" comes out of nowhere, stripping everything down to one guitar and harmonized girl-boy clean vocals. After seven tracks of raging against the world, bulletsbetweentongues asks "just hold on to me/it was never going to be easy/to see what I see/it'll all come back to you", exhausted by their own bitterness, craving connection all the same.

Normally, the live basement show has the muddy, inarticulate vocals, and the record has a much cleaner mix. In this case, the vocals at the live show far outshine the vocals on Fragility. The bass and kick drum both sound kind of flabby on my stereo, and the vocals are mixed pretty far back. The guitars and cymbals and snare kick ass, at least. The CD is in a cardboard sleeve, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I get that times are tough. The choice of white serif text in the bottom quarter of a brown background on the back gives the impression of the shovelware "classical" CDs that I spent too much of my life considering last year. I like the aesthetic of the cover art, a reaching arm with the upper branches of a tree growing out of it, but it feels disconnected from the contents of the disc. It matches the level of drama, but not the level of darkness and despair that bulletsbetweentongues try push through the speakers. They never quite get past that hump with me. When I listen to Fragility, I think things like "that's a cool riff" or "I know exactly what dance moves people would be doing here", but it doesn't really move me emotionally the way that other heavy albums do.

At a sprightly 27:27, Fragility is the perfect length for what it is. None of these songs are really meant to be listened to in sequence on your couch, anyway. You're supposed to go to a sweaty basement and slam into a bunch of people as these songs are played. Now that they're breaking up, this record does show the promise and hype was still just a little bit beyond their reach. I still had a good time with it, and look forward to see what these musicians do next.

Fragility by bulletsbetweentongues is a bad LP, but I like it.