Garden Window

O’Brother, Garden Window, Triple Crown

Taking cues from 90s and 00s rock and progressive metal innovators such as Tool, Deftones, and Muse, and nodding to contemporaries like Thrice, Mastodon and Junius, O’Brother creates music teeming with chaos, catharsis and atmosphere like few others can.  With every song building exponentially on the intensity of last, the young quartet manage to create a bold and intriguing rock album that sounds absolutely huge, and that is for the most part unparalleled as of late.  For instance, “Poison!” is a brooding, slow burning, rhythm centric opus that sees vocalist Tanner Merritt testing both his Chino Moreno snarl and Jeff Buckley-eque falsetto.  “Lay Down” combines the jarring instrumental intensity of a band like Tool with vocal histrionics that tread water in Matthew Bellamy and Troy Sanders territories simultaneously.  Covering varied ground at leaps and bounds is clearly O’Brother’s modus operandi, and for a lesser band the genre hopping could be a detriment.  But you’ll find no hesitation from these dudes as they navigate a spectrum of sounds and volumes with ease.  Simply, O’Brother’s Garden Window is an absolutely harrowing debut that shows the young band planting their flag firmly at the summit of modern alt rock.  On a side note, I caught the band on their recent trek with Junius and Sainthood Reps and these guys are a tour-de-force whose stage presence, expertise and sheer fucking volume have to make the bands they’ve supported as of late (Junius, Thrice, Manchester Orchestra) sweat.

Recommended For Fans Of: Progressive Rock and Metal of varied flavors, Shit that is loud and intense, Tool, Thrice, Deftones, Muse