Middle-aged Devilry

I love Like Bats, you know that. Like Bats have a split with this band called Young Devilry. It's a split tape and it's quite impossible to find. It has the best artwork ever and 2 of the best Like Bats songs, which may or may not have actual titles, but bandcamp lists them as Song One and Song Two. Song Two is my fucking jam, as the teenagers these day say.
The Young Devilry songs are available on MySpace OF ALL FUCKING PLACES. It's probably the only reason someone would want top visit a myspace.com page these days. There's also a song from their demo on it and a couple tunes from the EP Better Off Dead.

UPDATE: Apparently Matt, who plays bass for Like Bats now, was in this band. Makes total sense.

Anyway, this band is fucking amazing. I've been listening to the Better Off Dead release pretty much all the time for the past week, and it's amazing. It's in the same alley as Like Bats, they toured together and made an accompanying split tape so that makes sense. Definitely the first recording of both bands have similarities.
Moody music. Definitely. Lyrically they're downers most of the time; musically they write catchy songs as in infectious. It gets in your head and makes you feel weird and/or miserable. There's definitely a lot of negativity, which is often a virtue in underground punk rock music. Negative content is a staple of our music scene and it's something not everyone is used to, or can deal with. I listen to a ton of depressing songs but even I have trouble wrapping my head around some of Young Devilry's outbursts. But that's what I love about it. The honesty, the blatantly pure put-it-out-there attitude.

The demo and split recordings are alright. The Untitled track on the split tape really gives an idea of where the band is heading. As does the acoustic track, Spineless, actually. Better Off Dead is an accumulation of sad and angry songwriting and sad and angry execution. Arizona starts with a high-pitched jumpy riff and ends up being a totally catchy song that will bring you down regardless. That's the kind of songs you can expect. I Wanna Be Miserable: same. You’re gonna be miserable for the rest of your days./Too much to put together, you can’t even think straight./And I’m left alone. What else is new?/Nothing at all./Nothing./At./All. That's the kind of lyrics that get me off. I mean, they get me excited for punk rock. Sure, it's a depressing thought. But the fact that it's out there is cathartic and bonding too.
I think there's two vocalists in this band. That, or some vocals are overdubbed with a much cleaner and less raspy voice. There's a lot of passion in the songs. The riffage, the fucking bass riffs, the tiny breaks and fills, the part in Think Spring where the guitar part changes, like, a second too late, or the transition from Half Today to Half Tomorrow where the instruments form a quiet dialogue until the song takes off again into a full-blown distillment of personal development put into song. Also both songs are exactly 2:54 minutes long, which is either the result of cuttin a two-part song at the exact half-point, or coincidence that worked out pretty cool. There's fun parts to shout along to and sometimes that's all I need from a song or band. Just to relief some stress or something. Sometimes I can't help but shout along to lines like There are times I often think of you./And what I'd do if I was still by your side now. or My face says a thousand words./Your face shows a different person./Maybe it's the change of seasons./Or maybe it's just me./I'll be just fine. (I'm doing just fine.)/Back to the same routine.

That Think Spring song is amazing. The bass line, the guitar riff, the undermixed drums (that might be a negative point but whatever, it's punk), that weird solo-ish thing the guitar does and both the vocal delivery as the lyrical content are elements to a fucking great song by a band that apparently is impossible to find more information by.

So please, I hope this post does not only inspire people to check out this band (message me if you want the EP digitally, I don't think it's still available), but also maybe reaches someone who has more info on the whereabouts of this band. I assume they broke up, but I still wanna know who these guys were. For some reason.

Also, listen to Song Two by Like Bats