Grappler, good to see you in this thread defending Myrath! I love them.
Tim, I know it's not your thing.
Chad, I know it's your thing. We're literally one update away from your kind of stuff.
I also know this is not the ideal pace (no updates for 22 hours and then 2 updates in 3 hours), but that's what I can do with my work getting in the way. Still better than one update though, right?
#38
Act II: The Meaning of, and All Things Regarding Ms. Leading
The Dear Hunter
Genre: progressive rock, progressive metal, art rock
2007
Recommended to me by: Train of Naught
My relationship with The Dear Hunter is quite weird. I knew they were around the progressive scene for years, and when Train sent me The Bitter Suite IV and V: The Congregation and the Sermon in a Silt—see, 425, sometimes I can remember those long-ass names; if Coheed’s music was great enough to make the Top 40 of this list, I would’ve remembered their album name too—uh, what was I talking about?
Oh, so when Train cockblocked me on getting Act III and IV from Mr. Luke a.k.a. FlyingBIZKIT, I was quite irate. Luke was selling his CDs on DTF, and he had a lot of good stuff, like the original Haken –
Aquarius CD, which Train has also cockblocked me on. I was able to get Act I and II though, and Act I came with that wonderful typo on the spine,
The Lkae South, The River North. The deal was still great, Luke—both
Visions and
The Mountain look great in my collection, and so do the Porcupine Tree records, and that
Entropia bonus was awesome. I hope you’re also doing great.
You know, I really shouldn’t do these write-ups on Monday. I can’t concentrate for the life of me.
So, right, The Dear Hunter. The song Train sent me was incredible, and still remains one of my favourite songs from the band. But, you know, if you have this huge-ass concept with five (or, at that time, four) Acts of music, I’m obviously going to listen to them in chronological order. And while there’s no shortage of incredible material on each of the records, there is also some filler present here and there. Acts IV and, later, V are guilty of that—there are lots of orchestral, Disney-sounding like interludes, and especially Act V felt like Casey was just writing it on an autopilot, save for some brilliance shining through on
The Flame (Is Gone) or
Mr. Usher (On His Way to Town). Act III has some of the strongest songs this band has done, yet the whole picture doesn’t look so bright for me there—I always tend to skip some songs there. Act I is alright, but the band was obviously trying to find their ground at the time.
And that leaves me with Act II, and curiously, whenever I go for The Dear Hunter on my commute, in nine cases out of ten, I pick Act II. I feel like it offers the whole package of what’s this band capable of, while staying cohesive and concise. Maybe not exactly concise with the 77 minutes of music, but the album feels quite short to me. It’s never a chore to sit through these songs. It’s always a pleasure to hear the rocking chorus of
The Procession followed by a journey that is
The Lake and the River. You would think the quality drops after these two songs, yet it doesn’t. The album goes on with its own pace, doing its own thing with The Dear Hunter flavour which none of the bands I’ve heard were able to achieve so far. This record has its own distinctive style. So, you know, Train might’ve bought the rarest Act of the lot—I can’t find a cheap copy of Act III anywhere—but I’ve bought the best of them.
Favourite songs:
The Lake and the River (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Red Hands (
YouTube,
Spotify)