The Texas quartet Explosions In The Sky have crafted an outstanding post-rock masterpiece called All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone. This record showcases the band's exceptional ability of fusing dark and gleeful moods together and molding them into a sentimental entity so emotional and deep despite its musical simplicity and accessibility. Because of that, the listener must fully delve into this album before it can unfurl its hidden beauty.
Musically, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is a great album. Most of the songs on the album begin with a soothing guitar melody accompanied by a glum bassline. This soon intensifies until it completely becomes an aural frenzy of overlapping tremolo-picked guitars and powerful drumming. Songwriting is very well done and extremely polished, and the crescendos sound exquisitely energetic. In general, the music makes it quite clear that the band have put a lot of effort on it.
All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is totally on another level emotionally. The dominating mood is as changing as the intensity of the music, but it usually retains a transcendental and atmospheric vibe. Hope, nostalgia and longing are also notable emotions conveyed, but they aren't everything, because the ethereal undertones of the music leave a lot of freedom for the listener, especially with the absence of vocals. That's one great thing about post-rock: The listener decides what to feel in his aural journey.
I've only recently started indulging in post-rock, and having been a metal fan for nearly two years, I have to say that this album is a magnificent emotional journey; whilst black metal can successfully engulf the listener with an atmosphere of ultimate agony, post-rock can be both happy and sad at the same time. It can be both heavy and soft too. That is quite obvious in All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone.
So, to sum it up, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone was a very good album to start "post-rocking" with.
Highlights: "The Birth And The Death Of Day" and "Catastrophe And The Cure".
Rating: 4/5.
