Flying On Clipped Wings

Here's a few things I've written, from spring 2014 to winter 2015, mostly grim, all haikus, titles of varying levels of annoying stupidity. Have a look, feedback is welcome. Home Movies When father directs, Failure, high definition, Success, VHS Dead Opera Singer Apathy Central, Intellectual sweatshop, Phone slowly dying A Game of Thrones or a game of Kings? Single serving friends, Band-aid for isolation, Thirteen bad choices Obligatory White Poet Poem Mentioning Cigarettes To keep from drowning, Replace the water with smoke, Live now, die later. “Fine, Ok, Alri, Great” You the architect, Me the simple bricklayer, Walls between us rise Lying In Bed Listening To Elliott Smith Or Joy Division Past, momentary, Tomorrow lies years away, The next hour, further. My Consultant, Captain Morgan Answering questions, With just a “why the fuck not”, The great enabler. ...

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that a band or singer or teen idol saved your life. It’s hyperbole, often a sympathy call online or a means of validating your fandom when validation isn’t really needed. Having said that though, music does have a certain power. It can pick your mood up by letting you switch off and just enjoy the vibe. It can help push out the negativity building up in your gut, suffocating negativity, by forcing the tears out. It’s never gonna be too busy, you don’t need to lie to it, it’s just always there. Listening to music will get you through quite a bit. While not a solution, compared to a number of other coping techniques like smoking, drinking and self-harm, it’s a safe way of taking the edge off the shit parts of life.   To keep the top paragraph from looking more like an empty platitude written by a blithering idiot who sat in on one psychology lecture over orientation week and thinks they understand people, I should give some context. Mental illness ...

Bring Me The Horizon have come a long way from the shaky days of their first EP, released 10 years ago. With a trio of stellar records (Suicide Season, There Is A Hell…, Sempiternal), they changed the metalcore game, blending unorthodox elements like orchestras and electronics with a signature rawness and personality that was all their own.   Their fifth album, That’s The Spirit is an even further step away from that field, being closer to the 1975 than their former counterparts Architects or Parkway Drive. So does it succeed? Following in the footsteps of Sempiternal, That’s The Spirit is a rather diverse album, stepping out in a number of different directions. Opening track Doomed is a slow burner, a largely electronic number with more of the angelic clean singing frontman   Oli developed on the last album. Happy Song and Throne both dip their toes in the nu metal waters with thick drop tuned riffs and massive sing along choruses. Tracks like Follow You and Oh No howev...

Of all the melodic hardcore bands to come about in recent years, and that genre has had a massive resurgence, Counterparts have always stood out, and would be my personal favourite. Sitting in the same metalcore/melodic hardcore crossover zone as The Ghost Inside and Stick To Your Guns, Counterparts are notable for their emotionally devastating lyrics and a unique sound, technical without being obtrusive, raw but still packing a punch, harking back to bands like Misery Signals and Poison The Well. Their latest album, Tragedy Will Find Us, was released back in July on Pure Noise Records. So what to make of it? In many ways this album could have been hamstrung by expectation. Their previous album, The Difference Between Hell And Home had broke a lot of new ground for the band and stands as one of the most powerful albums to come out of hardcore. Tragedy manages to avoid this spectacularly, being this band's best album to date. All the elements that made Counterparts great have ...

An old album, but I really wanted to dissect this album, get an eye into it's soul, so here goes Building on word of mouth buzz created by a handful of Eps and some remarkably strong singles, The 1975 are the next hot indie band to come straight outta Manchester. Their sound is hard to pin down exactly, taking in a mixture of synths, guitars that are angular yet never oppressively a slightly seedy, swaggering rock and roll feel familiar to fans of Oasis or The Arctic Monkeys. Despite their name being The 1975, this band is definitely one who worship the 80’s, leaning on both the sophisticated pop rock that charted in those days but with an experimental side. The most obvious comparison point for this band is Duran Duran, both sonically and in their shared desire to mix accessible pop rock with a sophisticated, artsy touch, or even Simple Minds, the band who did The Breakfast Club’s closing song So what am I to make of this? Does it live up to the hype? Well first of all, ...

Forgot my password, got caught up in a number of other things during that period of time known as sixth year and well, I kinda want to take this whole writing thing a bit more seriously now so I've made this page just to publish all the little things floating about my head. Got a lot of built up material, a better internet connection and a bit more motivation. I love music, film, tv, life, human rights, politics, human experience and perspectives on those experiences, hoping this'll help me improve my own writing and expression, that people will actually, y'know, look at this and maybe engage with it somehow. That's basically it really.