Snapcase are usually lumped in with more progressive hardcore acts, but it's not like they're Refused. Once in a while, they chooga rather than chugga, and that's somehow enough to make them "avant" for genre purists. The emo buff and metal shine they for the most part effectively apply also works wonders on non-scenesters, with Snapcase patches occupying the same backpack-space as decidedly cuddlier bands. For years, they've been inching closer toward commercial breakthrough.
When Dennis Lyxzén of Refused made a similarly inexplicable leap toward convention by ditching hardcore completely for The (International) Noise Conspiracy's umlaut-laden garage, he at least took with him whatever respectability that band's nebulous roots provided, going from something genuinely new and different to something genuinely old and familiar (situationist ranting intact). The new Snapcase, however, is as unconvincing and plastic as a band of straightedge Furbies.
Once in a while, I think I hear the old Snapcase peeking out from within the glossy shell of End Transmission, twisting like the groovy people-within-people paintings that once graced the band's album covers, now sadly-- but appropriately-- replaced by slick, blandly futuristic schematics. But before nostalgia can set in, the ravening demons of production swoop in, snatching Snapcase in their filthy jaws: Daryl Trabeski's reedy yowl is swallowed up in multi-tracking or effects, and guitars that threaten to rip are all but absorbed in a dense, featureless wall of sound. Not that the production ruins End Transmission; on the contrary, the gimmicks provide some of the most memorable moments-- the stereo-tremolo effect that kicks off "Believe, Revolt"-- on a album without solid enough songwriting to justify the time spent in the studio.
Snapcase still brandishes an impressive portfolio of riffs for a hardcore band, but where they once shoved them in your face in turn, they now seem content to let one or two soak in over the course of a five-minute song, like vacation pictures at the guitarist's family slideshow. The band has also "matured", if maturity is measured in glum piano interludes; I might be all for a quieter, gentler Snapcase if each sparse, drifting tune didn't end up exploding in the exact same way. Even when unpredictable, End Transmission is off-putting: The shock of hearing Trabeski scream out the refrain from Modest Mouse's "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (on the coda of "New Kata") is quickly replaced by images of a throttled Isaac Brock, and a puzzled effort to remember the point at which rote repetition became an acceptable way around writer's block.
None of this is to suggest Snapcase have "sold out"; they're still, as always, on Victory, and if anything, their message is even more blunt and extreme. Did I mention this is a concept album? It's a concept album: "The year is twenty seventy-one!/ One drum by law has just begun-- to beat!" While not a reprehensible or calculated stab at crossing over to MTV audiences, End Transmission plays as if Snapcase were at least seduced, if not by money or fame, by the security and increased utility of bland, clichéd music. You can't blame them; look how Filter made out on those Hummer ads.
