Slaves — To Better Days (8/7/20)
I have been following this Cali post-hardcore band since its inception in 2014. The band was announced by frontman Jonny Craig some years after he was kicked out of both Dance Gavin Dance and Emarosa. Craig is an addict and he has been known to be involved in illegal activity over the years. He definitely burned some bridges along the way.
I get a bit of a nostalgic punch to the gut when I look at Slaves’ debut album Through Art We Are All Equals but it’s probably because the album only exists for me in one memory. I loved the sound but I never did find any of the songs sticking with me over the years aside from “This Is You Throwing in the Towel.”
The overloaded 2015 sophomore Routine Breathing continued with this sound that I couldn’t fully connect with. It checked off all the boxes with a big, heavy, emotional energy, led by Craig’s fantastic voice, but the songs just weren’t sticking.
When Beautiful Death came out in 2018 it passed me by for whatever reason (might have been around the time I was making the switch from Apple to Spotify and I lost track of some artists). I got around to it sometime in 2019 and found a cleaner sound from the band. They lost a bit of the edge but it was much easier to enjoy and I found some great stuff with songs like “Petty Trappin” and “I’d Rather See Your Star Explode.”
That was their last album with Jonny Craig. In early 2019 the band announced that they had parted ways with the frontman. From what I’ve read in their statement, it looks like Craig decided to bail on their tour at the last minute, leaving the band high and dry while checking in for their international flight.
That’s where Matt McAndrew came into play. The recently turned 30-year-old singer out of New Jersey is best known for his appearance on season 7 of The Voice, where he finished in second place. I’ve never watched the show but I went back to check out his clips and it’s pretty cool to see the young performer go from being mentored by Adam Levine to fronting a post-hardcore band.
McAndrew filled in for the rest of the 2019 tour and has remained the frontman ever since.
And that’s where we find Slaves now. They’ve shed themselves of the weight that was Jonny Craig and hopefully, this album will mark the start of a clean slate for the band.
It’s actually going to be the last album under the name Slaves. Back in June, the band announced that they would be changing their name because of its racial connotations. The name was originally conceived as a reference to people becoming slaves to their addictions and inner demons but the band felt that as supporters of the BLM movement, they couldn’t continue to tie themselves to a word associated with such negative weight.
The band said in the statement that To Better Days marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Let’s dive in.
I mentioned their previous album Beautiful Death having a much more accessible sound than the first two, and that continues with this one, if not even more so. There’s not too much to dig through with these songs. It’s straightforward emotional post-hardcore. Heavy guitar, crashing drums, drop after drop, and impassioned vocals.
It’s what I’m here for. I don’t need complex arrangements and fancy guitar licks as long you’re making me feel something, which this album definitely does.
As much trouble as Jonny Craig was, he’s got one of the strongest, most soulful voices in the scene, which is why he secured spots fronting bands like Dance Gavin Dance and Emarosa before Slaves. McAndrew fills his shoes well though and you’ll hear some of that familiar soulful sound in his performance.
These guys are classified under post-hardcore which I think is a classification that might turn some new listeners away because of its “hardcore” connotations. But really, there is nothing hardcore about this music. It’s just a bit of a heavier handed pop-rock sound. I don’t want to undersell the heaviness because they definitely rock hard but the massively melodic hooks are impossible to ignore.
This might just be the most solid album I’ve heard all year. Aside from the lovely acoustic “Footprints” and the 90-second slow-pop “Clean Again,” the album is just hit after hit. They even put out professionally shot and produced videos for EIGHT of the ten heavy hitters. Eight music videos?! Who does that?! It really shows how much conviction they have behind these songs. When a band invests in a nice video it shows me that they really believe in that song and want to present it in its nicest form. They’ve done that for eight of them.
I’ve already rambled enough about these guys and it would be a waste of time for me to pick apart my favourites at this point because I generally have the same thing to say about all of them. I love this music because it actively works to help vent feelings of insecurities, inner turmoil, relationship struggles, and mental health struggles in general. It allows me as a listener to sing along with these songs that admit their struggles and release my own struggles while doing so.
Lines like, “I wouldn’t talk to a friend the way I talk to myself” and “No one fucks with me like I do” are very therapeutic in allowing me to sing out those emotions. Like, even if I don’t struggle with self-abuse or whatever, I just love the feeling that I get when I sing those words. They’re negative but I do tend to get pleasure out of self-despairing lyrics like that and I think it’s a big part of the appeal with this type of music.
As much as I mentioned this being a very hook-focused album, it wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the heaviness of it all. A big part of the emotional power in these songs comes from the crashing choruses that have me air-drumming along constantly. The way they drop into the hook on songs like “Eye Opener,” “Bury a Lie,” and “Cursed” makes for some amazingly rewarding feelings. “Secrets” and “Wasting My Youth” are a little less focused on the drop but still hold a couple of my favourite hooks.
That’s it, I’ll wrap it up here. This is the last album we’ll be referring to this band as Slaves with. No idea what they’ve got in mind for the new name but they said it should be announced by the end of the year.
This album has left me very excited for the future of this band. Matt McAndrew is here to stay and the band just put out their best album yet. If there’s anything holding this album back, it’s that it is very straightforward to the point that even though I love these songs, there’s only a couple of them that I’m considering for my top 100 of the year. It may be the most solid album I’ve heard this year and I’m not looking for something crazy adventurous and experimental, but there’s nothing that’s surprised me in the way that the top tier songs of my 2020 have.
Regardless, this will go down as one of my favourite albums of the year whereas most of those top tier songs are part of albums that I wouldn’t even consider for year-end favourites. So, well done Slaves, thank you for the emotional tunes to feed my emo heart. I can’t wait to hear from you again.
