City of Caterpillar

Item: City of Caterpillar
Author: BW Diederich

(2002)

Reviewed by BW Diederich

Discogs Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Spotify YouTube Music

Label Level Plane RecordsDecapolisNovember 2002

post-hardcore post-rock

City of Caterpillar have been around for awhile. They went on, I think 3 tours without so much as a 7" to their name. This self-titled record is their first full length and it's out on Level-Plane Records. They're from Virginia.

It's all chaotic and discordant, but you know what, this is an absolutely beautiful album. City of Caterpillar take some of the best parts of the chaotic screamo/hardcore/whatever sound and mix it with a liberal dose of gy!be and explosions in the sky. Throw in some quirky indie rock like Panoply Academy or The Cranium and you've got all the makings of City of Caterpillar.

There are only 7 songs on the album, but 3 of those are nearly ten minutes long. From that alone you can tell this isn't your typical hardcore album. The first track opens with a bed of noise until 30 seconds or so in, the song explodes. All screeching guitars and yelping vocals until the chaos disappears without warning only to be replaced by multiple droning guitar parts and insistent drums building to this intense crescendo of starts and stops before the chaos kicks in again. This is taking godspeed's formula even further and having the crescendos end not just in a cacophony of music, but in a huge chaotic bed of guitars and screaming vocals.

Track two, "Heart Filled Reaction to Dissatisfaction," is one of the more standard tracks on the album. In this case standard means well above par chaotic hardcore. And I know, I know, hardcore might be a misnomer, and we could get in fight after fight about what hardcore actually is, but regardless, when I use hardcore in this review I'm trying to call to mind saetia, orchid, and the like. They sound different, but there's a basal "hardcore-ness" they all share. Work with me here. Genre classifications are tricky, albeit fun, things to argue about and employ.

I could go through track by track, but there's no need. This is an album of chaos, but at times it's a patient chaos. It's full of these incredible songs that switch from beautiful and chaotic hardcore insanity to even more beautiful and not so chaotic, apocalyptic, gy!be inspired anthems.

The last track, "Maybe They'll Gnaw Right Through," is the first track most hear seeing as how it's available on the label's website. It's an amazing way to end the album. Full of sass and chaos, it shows City of Caterpillar's best sides in their best light.

I know I tend to fawn in reviews, and it's just a fault of mine I guess. I'm an unabashed music fan, and I freak out over music to admittedly psychotic extents. I will totally admit it's hard for me to find faults in albums I'm fawning over. Same problem with City of Caterpillar. This album is by no means perfect, but I can't put a finger on what the problem/s is/are. I want to say they're holding back a bit, but I don't think that's the case. I think these songs are fully developed, and extremely well written. I guess what I'm getting at is they seem capable of more in the future. So maybe it's not that there are problems, but that I'm mad they haven't written their next album yet. I can hardly contain myself waiting for new songs. This is the future of hardcore. This is a band not afraid to take a tired genre to new places. This album is easily one of the best of the year.