Modern Color – Chromesthesia

Modern Color are a quartet from the Redondo Beach area of California, and whilst Chromesthesia is only their debut album they have stated that they want to bring a new approach to aggressive and melodic music. I always see it as a good thing when a band wants to shake things upand bring something new to the party from day one, so have Modern Color been as good as their word? well the short answer would be yes, but things are never that simple and a short answer doesn’t provide the whole picture.

The opening heavily phased mellow chords that open Chromesthesia lull you into a false sense of security, the apparent mellowness gives way to a frantic and discordant number that shatters the peace. The lo-fi post hardcore assault continues with the title track, which contains the same ingredients of frantic post punk and post hardcore riffs with mellow breakdowns. The whole album features the mix of discordant guitars and the impassioned vocal screams which switches into mellow, almost lounge, stylings. It’s certainly an odd combination, one that I’m fairly confident will be unique to Modern Colour. Whilst I can’t think of another record that sounds like this, sadly the album becomes somewhat formulaic with the same recipe for each song being used, just the amounts of each ingredient are varied to differing levels of success.

Chromesthesia juxtaposes an extreme and noisy post hardcore soundtrack with throat straining vocals with some very mellow lounge riffs, it’s a brave attempt to bring something new to the punk cannon, but it only partially succeeds as the album becomes a tad repetitive. However if you want to hear an album that does bring a fresh perspective to punk music then you may well want to investigate Chromesthesia.

You can download Chromesthesia here

Physical copies of the album can be purchased from Open Door Records here