Last Hours - 'Last Hours' (EP Premeire)
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There is a subway station in Brooklyn, NYC called Hoyt-Schermerhorn. Since 1981 it’s had two unused platforms on the outside edge of the station. Like a lot of parts the MTA, these closed off platforms are eerie as hell. If you spend enough late nights out, say after metal with your ears still ringing, Hoyt-Schermerhorn takes on a ghostly quality. The high pitched whine of hearing loss can start to blend with the echoing screech of distant trains somewhere down the tunnels, becoming a single dissonant spectre. Like I said, eerie.
It’s no surprise that you can hear traces of that hollow, metallic reverb all over NYC’s heavy music scene. It shows up in Type O Negative’s shrill distortion, Krallice’s nail thin upper register, in the jazzy dissonances of Page Hamilton’s guitar playing, and even in the sirens and mechanical tone of early New York hip-hop. Last Hours are the latest in a long line of New York City artists making Hoyt-Schermerhorn music.
Last Hours is a mean collection of mid paced tracks. The EP sometimes feels like what a more Stephen Carpenter-dominant version of Deftones might look like, i.e. a Meshuggah-inspired, groovy, in-your-face heavy alternative metal band. That doesn’t entirely do Last Hours justice however. The band describe themselves as “progressive” and you can certainly hear some of prog’s precision and genre-blurring. The end result is a hard-edged and rhythmically involved style that stays accessible without sacrificing the music’s aggression.
The band are aware of the city’s history of noisy, rhythmic rock music, ceding the spotlight on “The Enemy Within” to Candiria’s John LaMacchia for an unhinged and high flying guitar solo. In their own lead playing, Last Hours capture a perfect set of Hoyt-Schermerhorn tones like a short and clanging delay, or a long tail of reverb that hovers eerily in the background of the track. They also apply this ghostly sound to the vocal’s, most notably on the creepy-crawly highlight “Dead Sleep.” Not every melodic choice works, the chorus of “Jagged” is a bit deflated, but the textural approach to vocal writing gives the band a more nuanced aesthetic. If you find yourself waiting for the A train past midnight, give this a listen.
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Last Hours will be self-released on October 4, you can pre-order it here. Follow Last Hours on Facebook.
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