This Day and Age

The Bell and the Hammer (111)
by Tim Den

Another good example of how, even in the darkest cesspool of the most useless genre (what else? Emo!), there are treasures to be found. This Day & Age, although young and prone to over-emoting like their peers, are far superior than their brethren in terms of melodic ideas, instrumental arrangements, and compositional restraint. These boys know when to shout up to the sky, when to hold back and build pressure, and when to really go for the throat. But even when they’re going full-out, there’s never any melodrama, only clear, confident hooks that could be mistaken for classic Jimmy Eat World or The Prom. There’s also breathing room in the arrangements to allow the silences to speak as much as the notes, a quality completely missing from the likes of, say, Punchline. This Day & Age are obviously way ahead of the curve in terms of maturity and vision. If I were 18, these guys would be my favorite band, hands down.
(www.111records.com)