The Band in Heaven (demos)

There are a ton of shoegazing bands. You could pin it to a number of reasons: Most anything with a bit of fuzz and feedback is considered shoegazing, in many cases you can forgo memorable melodies for unique timbres, My Bloody Valentine is heralded by many indie music circles, etc it doesn't really matter, all that I can say is that when roaming for underground bands, it's almost definite that there is a number of promoted bands labelled as shoegaze.

And with that come clones and, again, it has it's reasons. When a genre is occasionally forced a definition from something as simple as "pop and punk melodies with a heavy use of effects and feedback", there's bound to be some out there that oversimplify a sound.

So when I received this recommendation, maybe I was a bit scared. I like to think I can see past the simplicities of what some consider to be the genre, but maybe I was a bit frightened I'd hear something from a band masking bad music with a genre label.... I'd say I was wrong.

The Band in Heaven, a shoegazing band from South Florida, seem to consider themselves as coming off the steps of The Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators, not My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. They make punkish music that happens to be thick and fuzzy, not the other way around.

And it is, very, thick and fuzzy. They trash and chug through their songs, leaving little in the way of clarity. The riffs are mostly simple, a perfect compliment to their sound, as catchy as it is uninviting. Take The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound and drown it, and you're getting somewhat close to what is going on here.

It should be great to see what comes out of this act, if the demos are any indication.

Bandcamp (buy it there as well as a couple free downloads and every song streaming)

A download of the available free songs in v0 (FLAC and other bitrates available on the site)