Todos Caerán / Bears – Split

Split 10” by Canada’s Todos Caerán and Austrialia’s Bears – two songs by each band –  and held together with a beautiful foldover silkscreen cover of silver ink on black cardstock. Beautiful packaging. It’s a pretty quick listen, but fans of screamo will find plenty to like.

Bears remind me most of The Shivering; where Todos Caerán structures the architecture of their songs around a few central riffs, Bears have a reasonable amount of interplay, a reliance on tension – the middle of third of “A Boy In Paris” is cemented by an almost military drum cadence under trebly, meandering guitars. It’s a sound that bands like Aussitôt Mort have done many times before, but Bearsmanage it nicely here. The shimmering playfulness of the guitars on “We All Have Rocks In Our Shoes” again brings to mind The Shivering, but Bears have loaded both of their songs with so many disparate sections and elements that they never run the risk of aping anyone.

Todos Caerán seems to have grown a bit since their previous demo – at the very least, they’ve grown unafraid of spending a significant amount of time exploring the textures of their songs. The bristling guitar tones from their earlier days – somewhat like Noir Désir fronted by the dude from Fingerprint – have been more or less abandoned for an even slower, more exploratory pace. If anything, it’s made the band even more jarring. “Aspirations” is a harsh two minutes before an elegant instrumental section comes in. “Illusions” is twice as long as some of their original demo songs – again, they seem to be sacrificing speed for longevity and exploration. Personally, I found their speed and brevity one of the best things about the band – but I’m interested in seeing where this is going.

Lastly, it’s great to see two bands from two far-spanning points of the globe working together to put something out – one of the most refreshing and rewarding things about punk in general. Definitely a cool release.