Capsize – The Angst In My Veins
LET’S OPEN UP THIS FOOKIN’ PIT N READ BOUT’ SUM’ MELODICK HOORDCORE. Shit is angsty, shit is great, shit is Capsize. Capsize is a band from the best place on Earth, San Diego, California. They’re signed to Equal Vision Records which has bands such as A Lot Like Birds, I The Mighty, We Came As Romans, and Bane. Upon inspection, WTF (why the face) is a band like Capsize with pretty hard-hitting and honest hardcore on a label with kids like Say Anything and Fairweather? I don’t fucking know so you’ll have to put the face away and go dun figure that one out yourself.
If you’ve listened to Capsize in the past, you’ll know that they have on previous releases put out some pretty dirty hardcore and by dirty hardcore I mean like their EP, Live A Burden, Die A Curse with traditional hardcore beats, raspy vocals, a bit more fuzzy guitars, and a greater desire to light up a cigarette and disregard other people’s property. Then for I’ve Been Tearing Myself Apart, they took all the despair and angst and put it through several filtering processes into a super-pure and unadulterated substance and put out some truly powerful songs – most notably, “I’ll Take the Blame”. For The Angst In My Veins they pulled an Elric Brothers, transmuted a few of their limbs, and now play some pretty angry and angst-y hardcore.
The sadness and despair are not as apparent as on previous albums as everything feels a lot more aggressive. The build ups, the melodies, the breakdowns aren’t directed towards or purposed for conjuring up sadness but are really there just to make you feel like you need to get angry, fix what you need to fix about yourself, and practice being a better person. Admittingly, on the surface it sounds a bit cheesy and some of the songs have some poorer, straight-forward lyrics. Despite this, you’ll catch a few moments in each song that draw you in and make you regret having a smaller apartment so you can’t open up a fucking pit and receive texts from your upstairs neighbors for playing the music too loud (yes, the struggle is real). The melodic hooks are often effective and the 2 steppin’wolf comes out in full roar. Speaking of roaring, the vocalist is in my top 5 melodic hardcore vocalists notepad because of his ability to maintain clarity, tempo, and viciousness.
They do a good job in making each song melodic and less straight-edge but are less inventive than in previous releases. In most of their songs on The Angst In My Veins, they jump right in and keep the same pace for most of the three to four minutes. They find their ways to spice it up but for an entire release, it just doesn’t cut it. This is doesn’t mean they have bad riffs and that any songs are blah but it loses a bit of replay value after you pick out a few of the songs you really like and then the rest just become filler. For example, I LOVE their best friends and tour mates, Being As An Ocean and their album, Dear G-D. Why? Because every time I come back to it, I find something enjoyable I didn’t initially find appealing. In the case of The Angst In My Veins, there seems to be less incentive to listen to the whole album over and over again in order to find a few more hits. I’ve found my star songs – “Linger”, “The Angst In My Veins”, “Endless Emptiness”, and “This Song Made Me Think Of You” and the rest seem – good but meh, like a 6 or 7 on the traditional female hot scale. Perhaps it’s a bit too harsh but if you’re going to steal my heart, Capsize, you need to keep it safe.
Written by Cole Olson
Capsize – The Angst in My Veins
Equal Vision Records
4 / 5
