Erase Everything – Glass Souls (Sunreturn) (13th Floor EP Review)
Glass Souls is the second EP release from local band Erase Everything, after their debut eponymous EP last year.
An experienced five piece hailing from Auckland and Dunedin the band members have featured with Pluto, Bleeders, Shitripper, Fever Lake and Crap Date over the years before deciding to stamp their own mark on the New Zealand music landscape.
A powerful, driving rhythm section overlain with fuzzy guitars, haunting leads and ethereal vocals mark their style as they explore themes from existential threats to the planet to the frailties of humans existence, and everything in between.
Angelo Munro, Milan Borich, Matthew Berry, Grant Sowerby and Jon Ropiha are forming a coherent, recognisable sound with this release, polishing some of the rougher edges of that first outing.
The opening track on this EP, Keajrea, also opened that original release, but gets a bit of a makeover with a crisper feel and production that feels more mature. The essence of the songwriting remains the same with its powerful message of standing proud, creating your own realities, showing who you really are.
“I definitely feel it’s the first song we wrote that truly establishes a direction and sound for Erase Everything,” guitarist Grant Sowerby said of this track with Angelo Munro backing him up.
“We are proud of creating our own thing and not trying to be a cookie cutter band,” Munro said, “ I believe we are all capable of blocking out the noise and creating our own destiny. So, in a way, it’s like things have turned to shit so abandon this world we compute and create your own world with the power of your mind.”
That idea to recreate and improve doesn’t mean casting off or ignoring everything that’s gone before, despite their moniker, with the lyrics quoting from one of the oldest philosophies still in practice today: Buddhism.
Om vajra dankini vajra waniye
Is the track’s closing refrain – seeking guidance from Vajra Dakini, a force as indestructible as diamonds.
The idea of throwing off old practices and ways is revisited in the second track New Year, New Idea. It speaks to the destruction humans are waging on planet Earth – selfishness, lack of awareness and responsibility.
Feeling a world unknown, Sinking ships, a slow demise, Hold on to what we know,
To see the signs of, and all time low.
We only have ourselves to blame
“We only have ourselves to blame came as a hook as the song sounded sad to me and it’s hard not to be sad when you look around,” Munro explains. “It’s just saying don’t blame your neighbour, blame yourself. We’re all consumers, none of us are perfect.”
The EP’s title track, Glass Souls, is a shift away from the wider focus of the previous songs, relating the experience of suicide and it’s effects on those left behind.
“Glass Souls was a way for us to process something unthinkable, and to start a
conversation about empathy,” former Pluto frontman Milan Borich said. “(It’s) about a teenager who took his life after relentless bullying (both online and at school), both of our (Grant Sowerby and Milan Borich) kids were friends with the victim. It reminded us of ourselves at that age, sensitive, creative, slightly outside the lines. And when someone like that disappears, especially so young, it leaves a hole that feels impossible to fill.”
On the candle lit carpet, all the kids sit for comfort.
All the pain and the lies, I can see in your demise, so low
Say what you will
Don’t want anyone to blame
We are one, but not the same
Don’t wanna anyone to blame
Why did you choose to fade away
“Writing this wasn’t easy,” admits Borich. “It wasn’t about trying to explain it, because you can’t, but about trying to honour what was left behind, the fragility, the innocence, the rage, the silence. Kids can look fine on the outside but they’re breaking inside. And the world, especially the online world, doesn’t give them the space or softness they need.”
The EP rounds out with the powerhouse track Shadows. Inspired by noise rock and VHS tapes it’s a commentary on 1990s audio visual that started with a Twin Peaks marathon and ended on Helmet, Sowerby says.
Munro claims an obsession with Twin Peaks. “When I heard Shadows it evoked an intention to speak to a dark romance,” he said. “It’s loosely based on the tension between Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne, and it being somewhat taboo or inappropriate. ‘Lying in the shadows’ is like saying they can’t have what they both desire.”
Shadows is not so much a wall of noise, more of a cliff face of guitars and rhythm recalling Shihad during their more restrained outings.
Erase Everything bring to mind some of the essences of Jazz Coleman and Killng Joke, but without the rage, less prickly and more muted. The same desire to reach an audience with powerful messages urging awareness, accountability and action are just the same, however.
The band are heading off on a nationwide tour to promote this release through the closing months of this year. Giving them the time and respect of listening to their message could change you and you could change the world!
Alex Robertson
Glass Souls EP is out now via Sunreturn
