It’s been 9 summers since Oakwood’s last release. At this stage, the underground emotive melodic hardcore band may as well be a new band all over again in today’s “content” conscious where too much happens too soon before we all just move on to the next thing. That the Austin-by-way-of-Odessa-and-Midland trio’s sound has endured the passage of time is evidence of actual substance to be heard within their anthem, and that makes itself visible on “A Tangled Mess”, an early highlight off their imminent comeback album, Blurred Away.

Things are a little different this time around for vocalist and bassist Mat Dwyer, drummer Noah Roots, and guitarist TJ James, however. The intensely DIY, lo-fidelity crackling heard throughout their first few orbits around the sun now bare the pristine markings of producer Phil Odom (Glare, Militarie Gun, Durry) and mastering by Will Yip (Turnstile, Title Fight. Lyrical darkness deepens because of it, but so does the band’s purpose to figure a way out of it, reconfiguring the screamo template with mathematical calculation, as if Touché Amoré tried their hand at being more like American Football rather than the National. “A tangled mess gets worse with time,” shouts Dwyer. These pages would digress in this instance, but hearing them do the work of untangling it regardless is a thing of affirming optimism.

Oakwood’s Blurred Away will be released May 29th on Memory Music.