What to expect from a record titled Insomniac Doze? Those prone to sleep at the prospect of 15-minute songs titled impressionistically after the abstract (say, "The Unknown Glow"), and after further discovering those songs are performed by a band, Envy, from a country, Japan, known as the spiritual home for musicians who pick up guitars and play them for not minutes but months at a time, will likely drift off at the very thought. And disciples of Envy's early years, when they formed an unofficial international alliance with like-minded post-hardcore bands Yaphet Kotto, in America, and Yage, in Germany, might do more than nod off at the news-- they'll likely chuck the disc.
Envy's days as a forward-thinking hardcore band are well behind them, and Insomniac Doze makes the case that they were never one at all. Their songs were always longer, their aesthetic, gauzier: With their stretched-out, openly cinematic take on hardcore's slasher-vérité came longer album titles, longer sets, even longer hair. Rather than drafting their countrymen Mono's slipstream, Envy probably helped pave the way for that quartet's nakedly orchestral snooze fests, just as Corrupted's infinite doom and Acid Mothers Temple's extended space-time explorations had paved the way for Envy.
On their newest record, Envy sound mild enough for the dentist's office. Reminiscent of the film scoring Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky have been doing in the last few years, Insomniac Doze accepts the same contours: chiming builds and ringing climaxes, drawn-out clean guitar lines, and EBowed sustains leading towards mournful bridges. But Tetsuya Fukagawa's tortured howl-- as if the band hadn't told him that they're no longer constantly aiming for red-- sits on top like an oil slick.
The fascination with cinema common to lesser Japanese post-rockers evidences a lack of imagination: They reenact scenes of rain falling, the camera circling up and away from a kneeling, drenched protagonist. It's the kind of effect that draws snickers when beheld firsthand and, post-Godspeed, on record as well; Envy, in retaining the gut-punch of their hardcore roots, manage the same general arc with less shtick and more gravity.
"Crystallize" is aggressive but otherwise near-symphonic pop that starts out galvanized and soaring before stretching out the confines of the song, carrying the melody on echoed, playful note-slivers. When the vocal comes in, it's not ethereal Bowie but more like City of Caterpillar, another U.S. band who successfully blended abstract-rock with hardcore immediacy. Envy's "Shield of Selflessness" successfully takes City of Caterpillar's mid-tempo blast and adds even more bombast, replacing naked panic with a kind of existential sadness, conjuring vast empty landscapes and cold vacant rooms. "Night in Winter" drops the storm entirely, suggesting only its drained aftermath.
So too with Insomniac Doze-- gone is the furious band that once expanded rock palettes with tricky arpeggios and lots of air. Instead, Envy have given themselves completely to their once dormant spacey impulses and time-lapse songwriting. Your interest may well depend on your attention span.
