by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
New York’s Died are set to follow a pair of well received EPs with their first full length, Less Life. Due out May 29th, the quartet have gone ahead and made a mix of all things heavy, working from a grungy post-hardcore base and expanding outward. They recently released the album’s first single “Busy Man,” a song that stomps through hard rock in a variety of unexpected ways. While they haven’t invented the wheel, they’ve certainly attempted to reshape it a bit.
The second single from Less Life (which is mixed by the legendary Steve Fisk) is “Oja de Macao” (which doesn’t seem to translate to much of anything), a crushing bout of dense aggression and scraped against the pavement riffs. The drums crack as though recorded in a concrete box (in the good way that old Helmet albums sounded) and the band’s grunge tenacity is bolstered by touches of shoegaze layering and post-hardcore dynamics, the song working into a swelling bridge that expands further away from the verses before coming back with the reckless crescendo, guitar solo, yelped hook, and all.