For a band that used to write silly, self-deprecating punk songs, Sorority Noise has embraced its vulnerability with the wisdom that it knows nothing.
Take the blank as a prompt, a space to think, to scream, to fill with nothing and everything: You're Not As _____ As You Think is the third album from Sorority Noise, a powerful and extremely personal statement on loss and grief and how we react to it all. It's a record with its emotions out front, but that still manages to peel back layers of hurt on every listen.
"No Halo" opens the album by clawing at the heavens, every riff, drum kick and vocal octave-jump a sonic wreck. Cameron Boucher, still dealing with the death of a friend and going through the motions sings: "So I didn't show up to your funeral / But I showed up to your house."
Kyle Thrash, who also directed the recent video for Every Time I Die's "Map Change," handles the subject matter with touching empathy. We meet characters from across bereavement: a young woman picking a casket, a couple expressing their grief with sex, an older woman smoking in a sanctuary before tossing a Bible, a man screaming into a plastic bag. The narrative is broken up by striking dance choreography staged in sterile situations; a support group, in a parking lot, contrasted with a fight — a dance — between friends on a church lawn. It's a devastating and desperate visual, a force of emotion that still leaves a blank space.
You're Not As _____ As You Thinkis out now on Triple Crown. Sorority Noise is on tour now.
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