TOUCHE AMORE
w/ Soul Glo, Portrayal of Guilt, Soft Blue Shimmer
Treefort Music Hall
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
7:00PM
$25 adv / $30 DOS

Touché Amoré has been burrowing through angst, alienation, cancer, and death throughout four adored studio albums. After over a decade of working through darkness, the band’s gorgeously gruff fifth album, Lament, finds the light at the end of the tunnel. Through 11 songs, Touché Amoré looks back at its past and uses hard-won optimism to point its fans toward light, and love.

Lament is their masterstroke. Its longer, structured songs soar with a ferocious but delicate musicality and powerful, gut-wrenching storytelling that smashes previous heights. Yet as much as the band has grown and matured via everything they’ve endured, it’s perhaps equally impressive how they’ve managed to stay true to their core…

Lament is a widescreen view at the constant fragility we face as people, as well as, life-after-jarring-trauma that we all must endure at some time or another.

Ultimately, the message from Lament? Bolm sums it up best: “That time doesn’t heal. That love can nurture. That it’s okay to not be okay.”

Soul Glo At Pickathon 2022
Soul Glo
If you gave Soul Glo a snapshot of what was in store for them in 2020 at the end of their first practice in 2014, you might put the space time continuum in flux. If you were to tell vocalist Pierce Jordan and guitarist Ruben Polo that everything that they had spent their first month as a band joking about, playing shows with artists from punk vets Paint It Black to Kurt Cobain’s favorites Flipper; from Memphis underground legend Tommy Wright III to platinum producer Pi’erre Bourne, were to actually happen, they might ask you if your hands were as fast as your jokes were. Despite the constant barrage of setbacks, from member changes, to financial strife, to run-ins with the law, Soul Glo has both repeatedly defied the kinds of odds that would fold lesser bands, not to mention their own standards for what they believed they could endure. Simultaneously, stopping or slowing down has never exactly been on the table for them, either.

“When we were stranded in Missouri, we started to weigh out the pros and cons of relocating there. We weren’t just about to leave our mans,” Jordan says. “Songs started getting crafted out there that we still have in the chamber.”

That said, their next release, Songs To Yeet At The Sun, serves as a perfect respite from the silence in between LP’s and the current lull in live performances that the band has become known for nationwide. The five song blessing gives a further insight into the frankly deranged production of bassist/producer Gianmarco Guerra, who served as the sole producer and one of three engineers for the record. Songs like “(Quietly) Do The Right Thing” and “29” continue to show Soul Glo’s affinity for speed as a vehicle for their aggression and messages, while songs like “I’m On Probation” and the previously released “Mathed Up” shows the bands love of chaotic-yet-atmospheric noise and the most popular rhythmic vocal styles of today’s current rap on top of the pummelling heaviness of the drums of TJ Stevenson. The band continues to showcase the rhythmic synergy existing between the entirety of the ensemble throughout the record, while the song “2K” features the straightforward rap production that peeked through on crowd-favorite songs “31” and “32” on the bands previous record The Nigga In Me Is Me, and also features a verse with instantly quotable lines from Richmond, VA artist Archangel.

All things considered, in a year where it feels as though quite literally anything could happen at any given moment, a record like the one that Soul Glo shorthandledly refers to as Yeet, one that features a violent and compelling sonic fusion that only they are capable of, is deeply necessary to times in which we currently find ourselves. In times where we are simply trying to survive from one minute to the next, one day to the next, it feels good in its own way, less lonely perhaps, to have music that reflects that uncertainty and fear.

Vocals: Pierce Jordan
Guitars: Ruben Polo
Bass/Vocals/Programming: Gianmarco Guerra
Drums: TJ Stevenson

Pog Promo1 2
Portrayal of Guilt
Portrayal of Guilt eschew predictability. While the Austin, Texan outfit have released material at a rapid clip since their formation only six years ago, it has been near-impossible to predict what each ensuing release might sound like. The only window into what to expect has been those releases’ titles, wallowing in themes of affliction, isolation, and just plain underworld allusion. Naturally, this leads to…Devil Music.

After shifting their sound over several immediate releases (most recent, 2021’s widely acclaimed CHRISTFUCKER), Portrayal of Guilt has transformed from masters of the traditional ‘90s screamo template, to fit a more blackened and sludgy metal intensity.

Citing a wide spectrum of influences, Devil Music, tracked in two different sessions in early 2022, is an experimental approach to writing heavy music. It offers five new original songs on Side A; and then a reimagining of those same five songs on Side B, replacing much of the traditional guitars and bass setup with an orchestral string section, acoustic bass, and brass.

The sludgy, thudding riffs of the album’s opening salvo, “One Last Taste of Heaven,” is transformed on the other side into harrowing violin waxing, while King’s unholy screech remains, nurturing the sound into a sort of chamber metal. It’s a paean to death and decomposition, with the original perhaps a violent aural display of the former and the unnerving rearrangement meant to convey the languid rot of the latter.

It leads into “Untitled,” an absolutely distressing depiction of purgatory with a nonetheless catchy rhythm, which the band manages to transform into a hellish near-waltz of sorts on its alternate version. Beyond that painting of torture, “Burning Hand” provides a brief foray into gory horror. The album’s pounding closer and title track sounds as though a Mephistophilean angel casts a scourge upon the narrator. Musically, “Burning Hand” even showcases some industrial drums, plus a rare spate of clean, semi-gothic singing to close it out. This uncharacteristic vocal detour helps build its counterpart to a demonic climax.

“Where Angels Come to Die” hints at the darkest of circumstances, possibly alluding to addiction and suicidal ideation, and is musically among the album’s most cacophonous; one hears it remodeled on Side B into a methodically paced number with lurching stop-starts on its bridge before a triumphant buildup to finish it.

Devil Music cements Portrayal of Guilt as a band of their own ilk, playing by no one’s rules but their own, which even here they bend to their will. The album sees its digital release April 20 and will be available on physical formats April 21 via Run For Cover. There will also be an accompanying Devil Music short film DVD, sold separately, which includes the short film and additional video content.

Soft Blue Shimmer
Soft Blue Shimmer
Soft Blue Shimmer is an alt-band from SFV, CA.

Charlie + Kenzo + Meredith