Album art by Dan Schaub
Style: Mixed Vocals (mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, Maroon 5, Coheed and Cambria
Country: Utah, United States
Release date: 17 January 2025
Your friend is a prodigy at Harvard University: He has a perfect GPA, is the leader of the school debate team, and is one of the most productive research assistants at the institution. With a lightning quick mind that quickly answers every question the professor asks, your friend has a destiny to accomplish something great in the world.
He’s not without his weaknesses though: You take him to a frat party on a dare, and things don’t go smoothly. At some point, humorous discussions about football are met with stilted silence from him. At another point, he got the idea that pickup lines were cool, and completely made an ass of himself to some poor woman. A deeply one-sided conversation about the theoretical limits of quantum physics happened, which was met with people distracting themselves with memes on their phones. Eventually, he just leaves the party, and you kind of regret bringing him in the first place. This unfortunate analogy describes Mend, and Eidola’s journey to it.
A worthy contemporary to the likes of Dance Gavin Dance, Royal Coda, and Hail the Sun, Andrew Wells and his crew are a serious force in the Swancore scene, which is a particular strain of progressive post-hardcore. Their progressive qualities are exemplified by songs like “Contra: Second Temple” off of Degeneraterra, or “Caustic Prayer” off of The Architect, which are brimming with lush colors, busy and dense riffing, Andrew Well’s anthemic and lyrical voice, and songwriting that defies convention by strongly deviating from chorus driven structures. With an incredibly strong series of albums starting at their sophomore release, Eidola have proven themselves as a talented and consistent band with a definitive sound, and are now setting out to try something new.
Mend is a part of a duology which seeks to explore territory beyond the band’s definitive progressive trademarks. The first album in the duo, Eviscerate, incorporated aggressive metalcore influences in order to better describe the darker side of human nature. Mend, on the other hand, is an exploration of the light side of human nature, drawing from both rock sensibilities and straight-up pop music. Given that their sound is already quite bright, this is the only way they could push their sound forward towards something even more luminous.
All the components of a good album are here: vocal harmonies, sensual melodic lines, a stronger push towards a verse-chorus-verse structure, a variegated sonic palette, and a sprinkling of harsh vocals. Mend’s potential is exemplified in both “The Faustian Spirit” and “Godhead: Final Temple”. The former starts with a few sensual guitar lines, before moving into a build that is brimming with ideas: beginning low key and slightly stationary, and gaining intensity with Andrew’s cries and an almost total sense of evolution. Then the chorus hits, and it could rock a stadium with the resolution of the tension built before. “The Faustian Spirit” then demonstrates its sophistication by not merely reiterating the verses, but approaching each repetition of the chorus with totally different ideas while still remaining coherent.
Unfortunately, these two songs are flukes; the songwriting for the vast majority of the tracks struggles with middling attempts at choruses, incompleteness, questionable endings, and the occasional embarrassment. “Empire of Light” is seriously marred by Andrew’s Adam Levin aping: Singing ‘I don’t give a fuck’ repeatedly doesn’t come off as sexy as he thinks it does. “Blood in the Water” labors through an awkwardness; the initial transition to the chorus feels like a complete after-thought, and while the chorus itself has a marvelous quality, each subsequent verse and reintroduction feels poorly thought out and confused. “Prodigy”’s entire problem is that its chorus has the intensity of something that should have been a verse leading to somewhere greater.
This was an experiment for Eidola: A delving into something more conventional while not selling out completely. The result ranges from listenable to totally confused, with a tiny sprinkling of greatness. If the band were to return to this kind of sound in the future, there would need to be a serious effort to know the line where pop goes from cool to cringe, a bigger emphasis on build ups and coherency, and a commitment to choruses that stand out in intensity.
Recommended tracks: The Faustian Spirit, Godhead: Final Temple
You may also like: Makari, Meliorist, Senna, Galleons
Final verdict: 5.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram |
Label: Blue Swan – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
band in question is:
– Andrew Michael Wells (vocals, guitar)
– Sergio Medina (bass, guitar)
– Matthew Hansen (drums)
– Stephan Hawkes (producer)
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