I know that metal, especially shouty metal isn't for everyone. I don't really even know how to categorize this band and my best would be to say that they are melodic black death djenty metal. There is so much debate about which music falls into which category that I am completely disinterested in getting into a discussion about that. I was shouted at on the comments section in YT once over this and now I guess I just don't care. Do you like it? Well, that is enough of a categorization for me.
Anyway, The band is called Spiritbox and they have a ton of talent as well as tremendous dedication to their craft. Of course I didn't actually "discover" them, I just recently became aware of their existence is all.
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Just like most people in the world these days, I am a bit of a slave to the algorithms over at Spotify in order for me to figure out what is new music because I am just a bit out of touch. This is compounded by the fact that I live in Vietnam and there isn't much of a metal scene over here at all. This band was pointed out to me by a guy that I met in a bar who also happened to be a metal fan. Like me, when we were discussing music that we like he started out his explanation of the music that he likes the same way that I do in almost an apologetic sort of manner when he said "well, you probably don't know any of the bands that I like" and it turned out we both like the same kind of music.
What I consider to be "hardcore" metal isn't the most popular sort of music in the world and it is tough for me and my new best music friend, Tom, to understand. One of the bands he suggested was Spiritbox and the next day on a walk I plugged them in only to absolutely LOVE the very first track that Spotify pulled up for me.
You have to keep in mind that the very first time I listened to this I had no video to watch, it was merely on my headphones as I was walking / jogging down the beach one fine afternoon. Based solely on the audio I thought they were another band that had a clean vocalist and another "dirty" vocalist as this is quite popular in metal circles these days.
When I returned to the same bar to tell my friend Tom how much I really enjoyed Spiritbox I told him that the man doing the dirty vocals sounds just like a much younger John Tardy (of 90's band Obituary.) He then told me that both the dirty and clean vocals are done by the same woman and this is just shocking to me.
People who don't understand or enjoy this sort of metal tend to not enjoy the screamy bits or think that it doesn't require talent and if you are one of those people I strongly encourage you to try it sometime when no one else is around... it's MUCH more difficult than you think.. Then try to do it for 40 minutes to an hour in a row. I bet you can't do it.
It isn't just Courtney LaPlante's incredible vocal capabilities that makes this such an appealing band to me, the rest of the people in the band have incredible capabilities and unbelievable rhythm. The tempo changes so frequently that only a select few musicians in the world are even capable of doing it at all, let alone at such a pace.
There was some booty-chatter going on at some point that they were simply a studio band and the accusations of Courtney either not doing both sets of vocals or doing them in separate session were running wild. This was because they haven't done much touring since much of their time in the limelight (they've only had a YT page for 2 months) has been during lockdown times. I don't know if it was in response to this criticism or not but they released a "live one take performance" where various musicians come on to produce live content in just one take. You be the judge.
Now i suppose they could have shot this multiple times, that is the wonder if the internet. However, this doesn't change the fact that you can tell that this is one take and no splicing has been done and you can even hear a few imperfections in the replication if you are familiar with both the studio version and this version.
Anyway, they made a fan out of me after just a few songs and I did find it a little disappointing to discover that they only have around a dozen songs in total and every single song has an accompanying video - which is extremely rare.
I look forward to seeing what this trio (they don't currently even have a full-time drummer) can manage to pull off once the world goes back to normal.
If you are a fellow metal fan, or even if you aren't, I'd love to hear what you have to say in the comments!