Call The Fire Brigade, Storm The Sky Have Dropped Pure Fire

Get ready to stop, drop and roll, the Melbournian post-hardcore boys in Storm the Sky just started a raging fire with 'Jaded Ghost', and it's a big one.

Is it hot in here or is just that new Storm the Sky track? It's probably mostly due to a decaying ozone layer we got going on but no doubt 'Jaded Ghost' has something to do with the temperature.

The Melbourne boys have been fairly dormant over the past couple months, save for losing a member and dropping another great track, ‘S.W.F.Y’, without a whole lot of pretext. However last night, they released the aforementioned ‘Jaded Ghost’ onto the internet with an accompanying video. We will get to the video but for now, a few thoughts I’d like to share about this track after a solid day or so of listening to it.

It's a fucking fantastic song.

I mean, you no doubt guessed from the title that I’m going to be jocking the hell out of the track here, so jock away I shall.

The song has a great sense of both melody and emotion, with a good dose of that post-hardcore tension that was found on the band’s debut album, ‘Permanence’. In ‘Jaded Ghost’, the band stray from the conventions of post-hardcore with some of the heaviest parts showing in the songs massive and intense chorus that features vocalist William Jarret displaying some serious screaming chops. Rather than blasting away at the verses before opening up some big melodic chorus with falsetto vocals, the band savour and cash in the actual heaviness only a few times to maximise its effect. Obviously, the song has a “breakdown” to it, yet once again, it isn’t just some open chugging guitars and a china symbol (the age old signal indicating that you’re about to fucking die whilst in the pit) there’s an essence of groove to it alongside a forceful and almost catchy riff.

[caption id="attachment_1085003" align="alignleft" width="320"] The artwork for 'Jaded Ghost'[/caption]

 ‘Jaded Ghost’ is also just a quality sounding song. The quasi-drone guitars sit perfectly in the mix over those incredibly powerful drums and  thundering low-end bass. Just take a second to feel that kick resonate in your ears, especially in that cold-cut opening. That’s the other thing  that I really liked about this song: it wastes absolutely zero time. It goes hard and fast from the moment you click play to the very final second,  the mix always filled up with a great sense of depth at every point in the track. I listen to post-rock and instrumental music more often than  Donald Trump defends the size of his hands, so it’s nice to not have a seven minute build up in a song every once in a while and get right to the meat of the song at ground zero.

I’ll hop off the dick-riding for a second and talk about my grievances with this release: the video.

Give it a watch below if you haven’t already and just take it all in. Every gorgeous filter and layer of colour that dazzles over footage of the 1965 film, Rent-a-Girl about a girl who mistakenly finds herself working as a call girl. Take in all the wonderful editing and layers of footage that overlap and intersect and then see if you agree with me in saying that this is a pretty awful film clip.

Look, no doubt someone spent a fair amount of time working on this video and concept, I just feel that for such a powerful and huge song,  the video could have been…well, better. I get that it’s in a lot of ways “arty” and “expressionistic”, but that's just my interpretation of course. Yet there surely must have somewhere along the lines in the pre-production stages been a far better idea.

At least the video doesn’t detract from the song’s meaning and quality as the track still resonates strong and true regardless. Have a read below about the meaning behind 'Jaded Ghost' as posted the on the band's Facebook:

"Jaded Ghost is about something that I’ve been tearing myself apart over for almost two years and it felt incredibly good to finally get it into a song. Just before flying to America to record 'Permanence', the person I was with completely destroyed me. I barely made it onto the flight because I went out and tried to forget who I was the night before. Even though I hated what she did, she was everything to me at the time. I put everything I had into that relationship and it was easy to hold onto it. So we spoke most days I was away and that also destroyed me because she said everything I wanted to hear regardless of the fact that it was way too late.

So, naturally when I couldn’t handle being alone with my life and brain all over the place… I let her back in. I did it in the most selfish way possible, for comfort. I never let her forget what she did to me. It was borderline cruel and I couldn’t be more sorry for that. It was the best and worst three years of my life and I’ll never regret any of it because it matured me a lot. The experience has gotten me to the best mental state I think i’ve been in. Though the bad days are worse than they used to be, they’re being doused by the sheer amount of good days I’m lucky enough to enjoy."

In terms of where both ‘Jaded Ghost’ and ‘S.W.F.Y’ fit into the canon of Storm the Sky, I can only assume it’s in the form of a new release from the band which will be announced July 3^rd at 9p.m as stated by a countdown found on the band’s website. The countdown is leading to the announcement of something called “Sin Will Find You” (assuming that's "S.W.F.Y").  Now, the reason I used the word “release” above instead of album or EP is because at the bottom of the website is a link that says “WITNESS THE SIN WILL FIND YOU EXPERIENCE: JUNE 18TH, MELBOURNE ONLY” which leads to the event page of a show the band will be playing.

Now the use of the word “experience” could all just be marketing and the works of a hype machine but I’d like to have faith in that Storm the Sky will be doing something special for this one-off show that might be worth your while. I’m also keeping my hopes up that ‘Sin Will Find You’ (dope as fuck title, by the way) will be something special also that the band have cooked up. Maybe a short film or visual art piece to go along with their music? I can only hope.

Also, have a look at the post the band put up to announce the new single.

The thing that stands out to me there is the closing line, "We start at the end."

I have absolutely no idea what that means but its cryptic nature, as well as the countdown, to the ambiguous ‘Sin Will Find You Experience” are surely linked. I guess all will be revealed come July 3^rd.

Oh, and if on the off chance you hate the song and my opinion of it, feel free to roast both it and me in the comments below.