Hopesfall

A few weeks ago a old friend of mine dropped me the line about Hopesfall  playing a reunion show next month. Now of course I would love to attend this because it's the NoWings To Speak Of lineup, which was their original lineup before they really blew up to the Trustkill/Warped tour fans. I've never been a giant fan of emocore, screamo,emotional hardcore, whatever you may want to call it but these guys always did a superb job playing it live and on recording.Unfortunately they never ended up playing my town, which I tried to book them around 2001/2002, but they always were playing shows in Louisville and Nashville when I would go down to hang out and go to shows.

From time to time I've been known to poke fun a little of over emotional bands who play live and act like fools crawling around the ground looking like they are about to cry or shit their pants for that matter. Hell their are a million bands now a days doing this but every time I saw this lineup of Hopesfall play live they were truly "emotional." It didn't look like it was rehashed, rehearsed, or fake at all. I remember watching them at Cornerstone and Furnacee Festivals and during their set witnessed a ton of males and females crying out loud. It just floored me that a bands live performance can actually do this to someone. Growing up in the hardcore scene you usually see people put fits to faces not hold their hands in their air and cry. With that not many bands gave me the "goose bump effect"  as I like to call it but when I saw Hopesfall play live I can honestly remember two different times getting this feeling. I saw them play with Cave In in Nashville years ago and their bass player used to do back flips of the drum riser in the middle of a song, this was a pretty cool to see for a 19 year old who only listened to traditional punk rock and heavy hardcore. I was so lucky to this classic lineup perform so many times in Louisville, Nashville, Furnace Fest, and Corner Stone Festival. So I'm not to bummed out I can't make it to the reunion show.

They have numerous records that are still being pressed by Trustkill Records I'm sure so I thought I would post their best work to date on this blog. I always thought this band had a sound at the time that went against what was popular in the early 00's and late 90's hardcore community. When metalcore was growing and Hatebreeds cloans were everywhere these guys were playing melodic hardcore that was influenced by bands like Hum, Promise Ring, Frodus, and Mineral. I thought everything they released was great but this E.P. They really did a good job of creating a sound that didn't have your normal verses, chorus, and bridges laid into it. Which was very apparent in emo/indy rock and in a lot of generic hardcore at the time. More than anything this E.P. had a Hum like quality which I thoroughly enjoyed. It always reminded me if Hum was playing hardcore music in shitty basement wearing flannel which is a odd analogy. Their guitar Ryan created the perfect blend of soft and emotional singing over Doug the vocalist ruff and aggressive screams on each track of this recording.
They really defined the future genre of emocore, or whatever you want to call it. This recording has a very beautiful spacy yet aggressive sound that a lot of bands could never nail and still cant. After this E.P. was released everyone quit the band but their guitar player Josh  and their future recordings never sounded the same.

I urge anyone to give this E.P. a listen and if you're a fan of them try to make it out to the reunion shows next month. I would love to attend but I'm sure I would be the only person from my city driving to N.C.

Here some information about the show: http://www.buzzgrinder.com/2011/early-lineup-hopesfall-reunites-for-two-shows/














Hopesfall- "No Wings To Speak Of" E.P.
[Takehold Records: 2001]
DOWNLOAD

1. "Open Hands to the Wind"
2. "April Left with Silence"
3. "The End of an Era"
4. "The Far Pavilions"