Photo by by Ashley Gellman

Balance and Composure’s take on post-hardcore has never completely meshed with the idea a lot of people have had in their heads of what it should sound like, even before they went away as a band in 2019. Where their peers Title Fight and Touché Amoré reinvented the properties of melodicism and emotive aggression, you could say Balance and Composure took on the role of disruptors of the style by confounding the formula with slowburning, grungy existentialism on their 2013 sophomore breakthrough, The Things We Think We’re Missing, before the term “grungegaze” was even a thing, and then completely beguiled once again by turning up the chillout factor and dazed heads toward spacier directions with 2016’s then-swan song, Light We Made. The next gen of hardcore-adjacent rockers are still trying to catch up with them on that one ’til this day. “sorrow machine” — one of two lead singles from the band’s reunion album, with you in spirit — won’t make it any easier for them to do so, as it celebrates the road less taken by the Doyleston quartet while continuing to barrel into their own cracked skyline with big, smoldering meteorite rocks sailing through the earth’s atmosphere. “I brought fire to burn it all down / Pay what you want, step right up and gather around / Sky full of flames that smother the town / I wanna keep you around,” sings Jon Simmons in its opening moments, as if to know full well the power he and the band harness in their fists. When its chorus hits and a vacant scream burns off in its distance, it sounds like kerosene meeting its ignition in an awesome conflagration.

Directed by: Dessie Jackson

Balance and Composure’s with you in spirit will be released October 4th on Memory Music.