Resonance

Personally, I can’t stand bands that sound like Kid Dynamite but aren’t Kid Dynamite, so my stubborn, fanboy ass was reluctant to pick up Resonance’s Transfuse after numerous said comparisons in the past. Though, with some obvious nods to the band and the preceding and possibly more influential Lifetime, Resonance’s sound is just as rooted in the late `80s D.C. scene as New Jersey; in fact, between the perfectly imperfect nature of the unstable shouts to off-key singing and the shifty major chords (with that slight arpeggio…Dan Yemin knows what I mean), this record sounds like Embrace got back together and did a Kid Dynamite cover album. So have I found a band that’s challenged my own standards? Yes.

What? They broke up? Figures…

Well, anyways. “Statues” opens with a rhythmically bouncy, Kid Dynamite-esque backbeat, but expecting Jason Shevchuk’s bitter “fuck you”s would be wrong. Instead, a style that moves between a more raw-sounding Ian Mackaye and Ari Katz shares introspective issues and climaxes with "I find myself moving to the beat of clock sounds" over a descending guitar harmony.

Though the majority of the ten songs are at full speed, the thundering tom syncopation of “A Surfacing History” segues into a mid-tempo narrative with a very unique breakdown: lock-step chord hits with one of the catchiest leads on the album filling the spaces. Here, the pleasantly off-key vocals really hit the spot, concluding with "the bruise has healed, but the sadness stays." “Machinery Outweighed,” if you remember the opening paragraph, sounds like Embrace covering Kid Dynamite; the way the vocalist holds notes are reminiscent to Ian Mackaye with how they break, and I swear that the breakdown was ripped right off Kid Dynamite’s self-titled album. I checked, though: It’s not!

The single notes that haunt the first verse of “Radiant Chains” provides an epic feel to the closer, but it eventually speeds up and pummels its way through catchy choruses and dual screams. Around this time I reflected upon the album as a whole and found myself reaching for the first song to experience it all over again.

Transfuse is a very impressive and honest full-length that leaves me wanting more, but will result in inevitable, unfulfilled cravings; whatever the members plan for future endeavors will certainly have my attention.