by LE Francis
This summer has been a serendipitous one for me. All 4 shows I’ve gone out to in June, July, & August have been at two venues – The Roseland Theater in Portland & The Crocodile in Seattle, two venues I haven’t been to since 2008 & 2018 (though in a different location) respectively. & though it’s only mid-August, I’m not going out again until late September, so my summer of shows technically wrapped with the Aug. 11 Hail the Sun show in Seattle.
Not only has “Divine Inner Tension” — the new album that happened to drop the morning of the Seattle show — immediately become an important part of my summer soundtrack, the show itself was something of a perfect bookend for an era of my life, & what has been one of the wildest summers I can remember.
I actually first saw Hail the Sun ten years ago at The Funhouse — a show lead singer Donovan Melero happened to mention on stage at the Croc because it was apparently their last headlining show in Seattle. That show was a hard one to forget, but not because of the band, they were wonderful. I, however, was awkward as fuck & after running into Melero in the crowd, I decided to say something like “great show!” only to get stuck next to him for what seemed like eons with nothing else to say. & in those eternal seconds I decided I was just too socially awkward to talk to musicians, artists, writers — anyone creating things I liked. I told myself it was always going to be shitty for both of us & besides, their awesomeness is self-evident, right?
& I stuck to that for a very long time. I avoided VIP packages, meet & greets; hell I even avoided merch tables most of the time, opting to order from the online tour remnants at the end of a run. But last year I started writing album reviews to fill a void here at Sage Cigarettes & after reading someone pan my favorite show of 2022, I decided I’d write something about every show I saw this year. This forced me to engage more with the shows, the music, & other fans. & then in July I absolutely smashed my rules, & ended up talking to someone I’d been going out to see for years & had a great time with him. & so having the Funhouse show come up again now felt a bit like poetic justice.
But let’s put my internal epiphanies aside & talk about the show itself.
The Crocodile is part of a compound of venues — including Madame Lou’s & The Here-After. There’s also a small, but very nice, hotel upstairs that I stayed in after July’s Between the Buried & Me show. The building is located in the central Seattle neighborhood of Belltown & is walking distance to both Seattle Center & the Pike Place Market. While the neighborhood is very walkable, downtown Seattle is notoriously bad for traffic and parking. I would say with any of the downtown venues – The Croc, Showbox at the Market, Neumos, The Moore, El Corazon/The Funhouse – arrive early & scope out parking options in advance.
The Openers
Origami Button
Scoping Origami Button’s track “Nervous” the day before the show, is actually what changed my opinion on trying to make the incredibly early door time that put concert-goers at odds with Seattle rush hour traffic. & while I hope 5 p.m. doors are an anomaly, I don’t regret showing up.
The band is mathy, reminiscent of something you’d find in the swancore scene, & the vocals have a smooth, almost R&B sensibility — & I was not surprised at all to find them touring with Hail the Sun, having previously toured with Kurt Travis & Andres. But this is a younger band, formed in 2017, with a fresh take on the long-standing west coast post-hardcore sound.
& to my ear, it’s the best parts of the Johnny Craig DGD years rolled into a jazzy, galloping, lush post-hardcore landscape.
For more information, check out Origami Button on Insta.
Kaonashi
This was the one band I didn’t listen to until I literally got in the car to drive over to the show. & honestly their recordings reminded me of a band I hadn’t thought of in quite awhile – Sikth. But Kaonashi’s live show was more like the old days with Horse the Band, or admittedly more niche — the old, old days of playing with bills full of scene bands at local shows.
I have not seen hardcore dancing at a show in a hot minute & that pit was hopping. It was fun as hell to watch from my vantage point behind the bar rail. The vocalist, Peter Rono, delivered one of the most delightfully unhinged performances I’ve seen in a long time & the crowd answered to whatever he asked of them.
While Kaonashi’s music via studio release is incredibly interesting & varied on its own, this is a band you absolutely have to see live. The band commands a corresponding performance from the audience & for a brief moment the entire venue becomes a stage.
For more information, visit kaonashipa.com.
Being as an Ocean
For a few brief moments, I thought Kaonashi was going to be the night’s pinnacle of crowd-work, but Being as an Ocean must have been standing backstage watching the feverish pace of the circle pit thinking, man I can’t wait to get in on that.
& they actually did. But I’ll get back to that.
When I listened to Being as an Ocean before the show I thought they were something like Architects meets Wage War (I actually first listened to “PROXY” & they ended up playing nothing from that album). & their live show played out much the way I expected for the first song & then the singer, Joel Quartuccio, jumped off the stage & got the pit moving by actually participating.
It wasn’t just a quick romp through the sweaty boys & girls either, he spent most of the set in the pit. & I was surprised when I turned around in the bar to see one of the guitarists behind me, pushing through to jump up onto the rail & play his solo.
Listen, I almost skipped the openers altogether to avoid the worst of Seattle traffic but showing up early was more than worth the annoyance. While Origami Button was likely the closest to what I’d listen to on paper, all three bands were incredible & their increasingly immersive methods of engaging the crowd were almost as entertaining as their live show.
Hail the Sun
This is the third time I’ve seen these guys live – the first being the aforementioned Funhouse show, the second being last year opening for The Fall of Troy at The Hawthorne in Portland — & they are consistently a great live band.
I got into Hail The Sun in the days of “Elephantitis” & “Wake” but have appreciated their later albums for the emotional rawness of the vocals & lyrics and the consistent, warm, almost pop-sensibility to their songwriting. On the post-hardcore spectrum Hail the Sun is about halfway between the more pop-punk influenced acts like Sleeping with Sirens or Pierce the Veil & the mathier bands like Protest the Hero or Eidola. They strike a really comfortable balance between what is instrumentally interesting & what is very emotionally compelling or relatable.
Their 2018 anthemic single “Glass: Half Empty” off of “Mental Knife” has been a playlist staple of mine for years. Though I admittedly find myself vibing with Melero’s lyrical style whether it’s a Hail the Sun song or another project like Nova Charisma’s “Hurt the Worst.”
& while this show was celebrating their new album “Divine Inner Tension” the setlist was varied & included so many excellent tracks from across their discography — “Black Serotonin” from “Wake,” “Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results” from “Culture Scars,” “Domino” from “New Age Filth.” & of course, the setlist included were the singles from the new album “Divine Inner Tension” — “Chunker,” “Mind Rider,” & “Maladapted.” The crowd was even treated to a little band lore, with Melero sharing that the person he wrote “Made Your Mark” for was hearing it live for the first time that night in the venue — aww, bro.
Divine Inner Tension
Hail the Sun’s 12-song album “Divine Inner Tension” happened to drop on the day of the Seattle show & I got maybe two good listens in before I got into the car with my brother who doesn’t listen to anticipated new albums before he has time to listen through his pre-ordered vinyl.
Since then, I’ve listened through several more times & as expected from the singles I heard – this isn’t just a consistent Hail the Sun release but something I needed to hear right now, at this very moment in time.
Let’s start with the singles they released in advance because they were a pretty accurate introduction to the album.
The first of the three, “Chunker,” is reminiscent of the tormented, raw, sound I originally fell in love with on the “Elephantitis” EP. But the production smoothes it out, makes it weightier, more formidable. In spirit the song may feel as if it could fit next to “Will They Blame Me if You Go Disappearing?” but the emotion has been recaptured, a new polished facet of a complex exploration of wrath & guilt.
“Mind Rider” has one of the catchiest choruses I’ve heard in a Hail the Sun song since “Glass: Half Empty.” Instrumentally, the main riff is punchy, bright, tumbling through the metrical space of the song, tugged back by the bassline. Out of the three singles, this is my favorite. It’s the type of song you blast while running errands, singing along with the whole of your lungs, causing everyone you drive by to wonder what the hell is wrong with you.
“Maladapted” dropped on July 14th, a little under a month before the full album was released. The tone is a bit darker, though the message is perhaps the most healthy, most assured — maybe that’s just my avoidant, magical-thinking side showing. The song builds an undeniable tension, though he’s singing about “letting go of the wheel,” the sharp, staccato beats at the end of the song almost feel like we’re white knuckling it. & that contradiction is a familiar feeling for anyone who has struggled with healing unhealthy behaviors. Hail the Sun is one of those acts like Sufferer, nothing.nowhere, Anthony Green, that are open & honest about their internal struggles – be it with mental illness, substance abuse, or childhood trauma. “Maladapted” is one of those songs that really puts that sensibility on display & like I said when I talked about The Sound of Animals Fighting earlier this year, it makes them a precious part of the scene – able to stay vulnerable even when it’s painful, in order to connect authentically with their audience.
The rest of the album is very much a solid Hail the Sun album. There’s not a single track that warrants a skip. & they carry the mood smoothly from track to track – the struggle phase of healing & feeling through various situations expertly translated into punchy rhythms & catchy, confessional lyrics.
One of my favorite tracks is “The Story Writes Itself.” The song has an almost ghostly, distorted sense to it that winds up into a wild, punchy bridge that almost reads like an auditory fist fight between Melero’s soft, plying vocals, the driving surge of drums, & the frantic repetition of distorted, harsh vocals answering it all. The music bodies reaction in a very interesting way – though the lyrics talk about betrayal & interpersonal woes, the song itself is addressing internal turmoil.
“Tithe” seems impossibly heavy among the other songs & the subject matter warrants it – throwing back to “Falling on Deaf Ears” from “Wake” & building on it. It is both harder & harsher than the song that came before it. Where “Falling…” addressed the personal loss caused by investing in organized religion, “Title” is focused on the societal cost. & simply put, it rips.
As a whole, this album is solid. I love the way the bass is written & mixed throughout — especially the way it leads in at the beginning of “Little Song” & “(In My Dream)” — it often veers in & out of the songs’ architecture, drawing your ear along with it. On the surface, Hail the Sun’s music is very guitar-forward, but the rhythm section is tight & I suspect there’s a little something special to their songwriting equation with a drumming lead singer. There’s an intelligence there that pulls the catchy, anthemic layering of the vocals all the way back into the rhythm, an expert stitching of sound that just scratches an itch in a way that nobody else can.
The album is available widely to stream but I’d definitely recommend you pick it up on vinyl if they’re still available via their label, Equal Vision. For more information about the band, visit hailthesun.com.
Verses on Verses is a weekly music column from the perspective of a poet. Inquiries can be directed to LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.
LE Francis (she/her) is the managing editor of Sage Cigarettes Magazine; a columnist & staff artist for Cream Scene Carnival Magazine; co-host & staff editor of A Ghost in the Magazine & The Annegirls Podcast; & the author of THIS SPELL OF SONG & STAR available through Bottlecap Press. She is a writer, musician, & visual artist living in the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. Find her online at nocturnical.com.
