by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
The first chapter of Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’s story was built on raw and explosive post-hardcore with ramshackle time signatures and snotty emotive vocals, but a lot has changed. While the band were first active at the turn of the century, that era came to an end with a thirteen year hiatus before the Ithaca based quartet decided to reform back in 2015. With a sense of added maturity that inevitably comes from aging, 2019 brought Some Years, an album (produced by J. Robbins) that highlighted a newfound nuance, a refinement if you will. Fast forward five more years and the band are back at it again with their new record Thirds, due out June 22nd. Written over what could be described as a strange few years for the world, Eighteen Hundred’s corrosive structures are propulsive and delightfully off-kilter, but fully realized, the push and pull working in favor of their melodic core.
Having worked together again with Robbins (who handled the album’s mixing), it feels appropriate that Jawbox provide a reliable reference point to Eighteen Hundred’s music - moody, layered, and driven by the progressive and combustible touch of the drum patterns. Comprised of Joe Kepic (guitar), Tom Yagielski (bass), Brendan Kuntz (drums), and David Nutt (guitar, vocals), the band capture the tenacity of math rock complexity with a raspy accessibility, crafting their finest material yet, case in point, “Elevens,” the album’s lead single. The playing is undeniably jagged, rhythmically prone to unpredictable shifts, but there’s a sense of controlled chaos, the pieces fit as intended, the wild and the tame in synchronicity. Just when you think you have the song figured out, Eighteen Hundred erupt with a swarming guitar solo. An avalanche of post-hardcore excitement.
Speaking about the track, Nutt shared:
“We spent about five years writing, demoing, recording, then rerecording the new album. During that time, we were trudging through the usual murky life stuff: jobs, marriages, kids, mortgages, a medieval plague. After enough years and enough turbulence, work becomes a weird form of solace. Not just the paycheck, but the purpose, the routine. ‘Elevens’ is a kind of paranoid fever dream about life without work—or maybe work without life. The hours are long. The money isn’t great. Is it possible to be laid off from the hereafter? The pink slips never stop coming.”