Northbound – Death Of A Slug

It’s been a good while since I’ve encountered what you might call a really devoted “emo” band.  The type that really embraces lamenting life’s lemons and being unapologetically miserable about it in the process.  Sadly my streak seems to have come to an end with encountering Boca Raton, Florida’s Northbound.  The primary project of musician Jonothan Fraser, Northbound offers a pretty bleak picture of life with few redeeming features.  I don’t like to infer about artists’ personal lives too often, but if Northbound’s latest full length, Death Of A Slug, is any indication, Fraser has been dealt a bum hand in life, and he seems intent on dragging us all down with him.

The bulk of Death Of A Slug pertains to relationship regrets and basically crying for forgiveness.  Northbound demonstrates little to no self confidence or resilience and would rather forget the faults in a crashing relationship and carry on living a lie then cut ties.  “Don’t let me go I don’t want to be alone anymore; [I’m] miserable here alone,” pleads Fraser in the chorus of opener “Lucky Sentimental.”  There’s a difference between remembering the good times and just flat out choosing to forget someone that treats you like garbage – Northbound doesn’t understand this.  The sentiment continues in the descriptions of an unfaithful girlfriend in “Everyone But Me” (“I don’t want to wake up if I wake up all alone”) and the inability to regain independence post-breakup in “6am Beer Man” (“I’m sure I’d be much happier if I didn’t depend on you to smile”).  Put simply, despite demonstrating a sliver of self awareness, Death Of A Slug is shockingly spineless even by genre standards.

Instrumentally Death Of A Slug follows a standard pop-punk propelled emo mould (granted the riffs have some meat on their bones), but Fraser’s incessant whine is a headache waiting to happen.  Overly emotional and exaggerated, a word doesn’t pass without dragging it through an aggravating and ‘complainy’ filter.  When the tempo slows (i.e. “Slug”), the syllabic word drag is a piercing nuisance.  When the tempo speeds up (i.e. “I Want To Hate The World”), the event typically lasts for just a few bars followed by Fraser reverting back to the same drivel.  Combined with such self defeating lyrics, Fraser’s toothless pleas are inescapably annoying.

And on one last note, since when did it become “cool” again to reference “chain smoking cigarettes” (“The Effort Is Never”) and affectionately describe images of your crush holding a pack of Marlboro Blue (“Caffeine And Nicotine”)?  It’s 2015, and I’m pretty sure romanticizing your ex’s smoking habit goes against some sort of unspoken pop-punk and emo code of ethics.  Andrew Jackson Jihad pretty much put the nail in that coffin with their anti-smoking satire, “Cigarettes,” so this one is just puzzling.

Some minor similarities could be likened to Into It. Over It., The Wonder Years and Modern Baseball, but that would mostly insult a few well-regarded bands and mislead readers.  I get where Northbound is coming from (somewhere deep in the early 00’s perhaps, and from a place of self-depreciating heartbreak), it’s just hard to understand why anyone would want to present themselves like such a mess.  Death Of A Slug is void of the charm that goes hand in hand with today’s surviving emo acts.  Respect your self-image and confidence and avoid this one.