Ex Everything is nothing bad, au contraire, it seems as if they can’t do anything wrong which means that there is something in the air with this band! Consisting of members of some famous bands the Bay Area quartet is really one grand entity in the realms of Post-Hardcore and Noise-Rock!
Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart - yes, of course there is that reminiscence to one of the most famous songs of all time (NME said it was the best single of all time), yes, the one by Joy Division. But if you read the title correctly, one might also see an allusion to GY!BE’s second release (on their own) and the last one before record that broke the “charts”, a parallel to Joy Division. Nevertheless, if Ex Everything is able to surpass this first record on their next release, then we might be talking about a game changer in a lot of ways. Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada and also Unknown Pleasures were both amazing in their own way, yes, however, we must admit that GY!BE and JD got big with the next release - Lift your Skinny Fists…. and Closer are the records that most people will remember them for. However, to be clear, Ex Everything is much closer to Godspeed in their political agenda, but their music is much clearer, more spiteful and angry and by and large, much more Punk and extrovert
So let’s have a closer look at Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is the debut record for this new Bay Area quartet consisting of members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves and blowupnihilist (among others) and the certain Math-Rock meets Noise-Core roots can definitely be heard on this record, even though the eight songs serve none of these genres, there is just something in the way the band performs. Think about the opener ”The Reduction of Human Life to an Economic Unit” sounds pretty mathematical and reasonable (just say it out loud, no screaming) but in the context of Ex Everything you need to scream the words and you will automatically notice the urgency of the idea. And that is exactly what vocalist Andre Sanabria does – he screams his message into our faces and ear tunnels, where the guitar lines by guitarist Jon Howell have already unfolded their hooks and have made their beds with the help of all the pretty mathy guitar lines. Ben Thorne’s bass and drummer Dan Sneddon provide a lot of push from the outside trying to force the songs’ ideas and messages deeper and deeper.
But why do they do that? What is the idea for these pumping songs, trying to shake us all up? Here the record title will help us again and a little look at human history will serve as an example. What is worse – an explosion or a slow decay? Most of us will say “Explosion!” but to me, being a history teacher, it’s the “slow decay”. Throwback to Munich, 1923: November 9th saw Hitler and some fellow felons try to overthrow the (already unstable) political system of the Weimar Republic. Failed. The explosion didn’t work. Flash forward to the period between late October 1929 and late January 1933: The economic crisis threw the world into turmoil and people were too busy saving their asses to notice the slow decay in the political and social climate, the radicalization of the masses at the hands of Hitler’s party which used it to the fullest in order to pinpoint every evil event, each horrible happening, each terrifying turn of inflation, democratic instability on their opponents. No explosion just a constant shift towards the wrong side of the spectrum which then resulted in Hitler’s turn at the chancellorship on January 30th, 1933. The slow pull had achieved its aim and we all know how it ended, in terror, in war, in genocide. When Andre screams ”we walk away from it all / from it all” (in ”A Sermon in Praise of Corruption”) then that is a call to arms – no not brute force, but not to look away, not to let the right-wing bastards take over, for their aim is to create nothing but a herd of sheep or lemmings. You wanna wake up in Hitler-Germany? Or the Stalinist Soviet Union? Mao’s China? Or in a second run of Donald-the-idiot? Then go to sleep. But do not wonder why you will wake up in a divided society with you maybe on the wrong side and under the scrutiny and terror force of the “government”! For that is their agenda: Divide the people, use and abuse the side supporting you, persecute and execute the other one. When the latter is done, turn around and do a good round of political cleansing, exterminating the enemies on your own side, like Hitler did it with the SA and Ernst Roehm, like Stalin always threatened to do and how Pol Pot surely did it in Cambodia!
If you want to go against that, if you want to oppose and not die at the hands of Trump, Orban, Putin, Hoecke, Wilders, Meloni, Erdogan or anyone working like they do, trying to be like them, imitating their stupid “divide et impera”-formula – then Ex Everything and Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart will be your soundtrack.
