Past-Hardcore: the MySpace Days
Eyes Like Diamonds
Welcome back to Past-Hardcore, a series where I take a closer look at some of my favorite obscure/overlooked bands and releases within post-hardcore. It’s been a while, but let’s continue with Eyes Like Diamonds. Last signed to Tragic Hero Records, they made waves on Myspace back in the day. Now they’ve got 376 monthly listeners on Spotify (up from 327 when I started drafting this!),934 subscribers on YouTube, and 12.2k listeners on last.fm.
Eyes Like Diamonds were both a product of and ahead of their time sonically. Eyes Like Diamonds was formed by former members of A Dying Fate and Fletch, bands I have found limited information on. The contrast of heaviness in the guitars and drums coexisting with floating synth parts and trilling guitar solos are something I love to hear post-hardcore and that few bands were able to execute in such a masterful way as this band did.
Trying to track down lineup changes is difficult with smaller bands, but from what I could gather from some of their tour vlogs and scouring the internet, the line up changed, with a guitarist leaving and being replaced. Learning about this band is confusing me quite a bit, and I’ve got questions that only the people involved can answer. The names I found associated with this project were: Diego Perez, Tony Pell, Danielle Shrudder, Matt, Mason, and Aaron.
Eyes Like Diamonds released 2 albums and 2 singles in their time as a band, and signed to Tragic Hero Records in June of 2013. The majority of their work is defined by heavy sections balanced with melodic intertwining guitarwork, groovy bass breaks, and the keyboard (sometimes synthesizer, sometimes piano).
Last year I was on a post-hardcore kick (as I usually am) and was going back through On the Sidewalk Bleeding’s EP when I saw I had saved Eyes Like Diamonds on last.fm, so I decided to give them a listen. I decided to start with the first album Mystery. Seems I didn’t give it much thought until summer. My summer was characterized by progressive post-hardcore and Eyes Like Diamonds met my criteria. Groovy, melodic, layered, and emotional.
Mystery is the overall heavier of the albums, leaning more on the usual post-hardcore formula of the time (gang vocals, rock-inspired riffs, screaming similar to that of Underoath) with some breaks for the keyboard.
Frequencies is my favorite album in their discography, and my favorite tracks on it are This Sinful City and Years in the Making. Not even close to their most popular tracks on Myspace, the This Sinful City has held up and grown in appreciation over the years (from 39 plays to 30k+ streams) and Years In the Making is still underappreciated (19k+ streams when I think it should be their most popular track). What made This Sinful City ahead of it’s time? And what makes Years in the Making such a beautiful product of its time?
This Sinful City
follows a particular song structure that I find very satisfying. The bulk of the song is twinkly and melodic, a defining feature of this album. The song is also accents the upbeats (an element that can be tied back to ska), making it feel bouncy and fun (encouraging movement). Then it takes a turn into heavy about 3/4 of the way through the song for something that’s better to mosh to. For a song under 4 minutes, there’s a lot going on.
For the guitars, there’s the overdriven one keeping the ska-like rhythm and mirroring the screams, then in the first instance of the chorus if you listen closely, a particular tremolo picked melody on the guitar is taken up by the vocals at the end. All throughout there’s the twinkly guitar from the introduction, replaced in the breakdown by the synthesizer. The drums in this album are also incredibly solid, opening and ending the track with a similar beat, carrying the breakdown with the double kicks. I have yet to hear anything that rivals it in structure and feel.
Years in the Making
takes a completely different format, almost ballad-like at the beginning with guitars drenched in reverb and delayed piano in the background, quickly transformed into post-hardcore with all the bells and whistles (double kick, screaming, chugging). Just over 6 minutes long, the time is taken advantage of with electronic sections thrown in referencing the intro, echoing their first album, and reflecting the general popularity of electronic music at the time. The song is unapologetically post-hardcore, unapologetically electronic, unapologetically the sound of 2011. The song fades out like a dream slipping through as the reality of what around closes in at the end of this journey of an album and marks the end of this band’s discography.
The modern “progressive sound” in post-hardcore is narrowly defined, and tragically so. Eyes Like Diamonds was progressive in a unique way and developed a sound far different from the prestigious names of progressive post-hardcore today. The years Eyes Like Diamonds were active had a variety of sounds, a variety that is lacking in the scene today. I believe that such sounds could have been taken to greater levels, but by about 2015, all but a select few bands from this era are gone for good. Post-hardcore held a uniquely popular position at the time, but that position was also fragile. Gaining success as a musician is difficult, no doubt, and was more difficult before the prevalence of streaming and monetized social media. Best thing I can do for now is keep talking about what they did, and try to develop my own skills as a musician in appreciation.
For more bands like this, take a look at the band’s top 8, as well as SeeYouSpaceCowboy…, Split Persona, and Foreign Hands for some modern bands with a similar(ish) sound. Not awfuly similar though because that sound is one that not many (if any) bands are doing today, but there’s some stylistic elements executed similarly. For bands contemporary with ELD (and still somewhat active) there’s Alesana, A Lot Like Birds, Of Machines, Eidola and Pacific Skyline, although not quite the same, but there’s similar qualities. Finding bands outside the band’s own top 8 that sound similar is difficult. MySpace kept on recommending me “similar music” that was all purely electronic artists. I look forward to covering more contemporaries in the future of this series.