Review: Infinite Void by With Sails Ahead released independently
Back in November, With Sails Ahead entrusted the AsterTracks team with “Darting Eyes.” We had a bit of fun with the write up to the lead single of their debut record, but now they’ve sent us the whole thing. I don’t even know what to say as an intro to this one. This band already feels so huge in this space we all occupy, it feels like they’re always in conversation for being the best of the best in DIY and it’s weird to call this record an introduction. Still, Infinite Void is here and will be available to everyone on April 26th, but if you want the recount of the journey we went on within as an appetizer, we’re ready to share it.
Even the first eight seconds of the record feel huge. “every day the sky falls” opens with just a few piano strokes and some chirping birds. It's a moment where you’re transported into this band’s world if only you allow yourself to get fully immersed in it. Vocally, the first verse opens so soft and vulnerable and tonally it picks up though at a snail's pace. The titular line of the track feels so dark yet so declarative and Sierra doesn’t even give us the entire line until the second time it comes up. There aren’t a lot of bands who manage to sound huge like this within this genre anymore. Don’t get me wrong, there’s incredible post-hardcore bands out there right now, not many make you feel like if you don’t go beyond the singles, the first tracks, you’ll be missing out on something magical. One of my favorite things any band can do is write a song which would be as much an intro as it is an outro. The bridge, the string section, the fact we see the full range of a band and vocalist in just one song and those are only tastes. We’re only getting started.
Doesn’t it all feel perfect, how the gloom seems to stay so long?
The promise that lifes not worthless, what if they’re all wrong?
The record had four singles with the first being “Darting Eyes,” which as said, we did already cover so I won’t go too deep into it here. What I will say is it fits very nicely here at track three. At this point of the full-length listen it's a side of With Sails Ahead we haven’t seen yet. It’s a bit of a heavier song, it has more aggressive riffs, screams and themes of death and paranoia. It also absolutely has anime opening vibes especially with the outro to the track and really makes the album cover paint a picture of this band’s influences instrumentally.
The second single, “Swear Words” is probably my favorite of the preview tracks and feels the most like a single. It’s a very digestible alt rock ballad and has something for everyone, could for sure play to just about any audience. It also has a catchy Emo Nite ready chorus and feels like such a moment within a body of work with the way they made it seamless into the tracks before and after. If you feel loved the messaging of someone being able to calm the storm once you let them in feels global, but you do have to let them in. If you’re prickly like I know I can be, it feels universal.
You never falter or cower or run, even when my self-hatred could ignite and burn the sun.
I never promised myself I’d be free, I thought peace was a figment of dreams.
I saved “Honey” until I could hear the record in full as I knew a pulses. feature on this record was imminent and I wanted to savor it for the exact right moment. This one is a classic post-hardcore cut with math rock ground work and a really fun vocal melody whose subject matter on losing yourself is a little less fun. It’s also one of those songs where it needs headphones or surround sound to be immersed in all the intricacies. As always, pulses. absolutely blows their feature away. On so many of this band’s guest spots they make the moment they’re present completely their own, almost like a pulses. song fits snugly inside the song around it. Matt and Caleb make you feel so split in their individually vocal parts, which go on at the same time but feel so distinct. David on the lows provides an excellent role of support. I would guess Kevin wrote the lyrics here and as always really made it something memorable.
Searching the streets for the answer to sanity.
Dizzy the dance for the sake of the memory.
Paying the piper to remix the eulogy.
Ironclad heart to silence the enemy.
I already had access to “what if i fall” before it was put out as a single so I didn’t have the option to listen early, but it makes a lot of sense as a final teaser. Sonically this one feels huge, it’s heavy, it has great riffs, gigantic percussion and a breakdown so out of nowhere it leaves me sweating even sitting down. The whole thing has so many twists and turns and feels so bleak yet so celebratory. I could for sure see this being a set opener and it comes after a curveball track in the mid-section and feels executed in the best way on every front.
There is a second feature from Kevin Torres of Poeta on “In Search Of.” There’s a nice synth intro to his feature and he comes in on a harmony with Sierra. I know for her this song was very personal and to see the two come together creates a beautiful moment demonstrating their bond. The song also has a big rock ending leading into an abrupt end and is yet another great addition to the With Sails canon.
The aforementioned midsection song, “Peach Tea” is by far my favorite on the entire project. The tones and production make it all feel so bare and stripped back. I’ve honestly been thinking about the acoustic tones here all week and the bass line is another thing I couldn’t fully register until it was right against my ears. Plus, the little licks hidden in the back? Perfect. It’s another one of those songs who feel so unique but so a part of Infinite Void as a body of work. I took a week to just be a fan of this record before I took any ink to my notebook. During this week I had a lot of trauma dreams, I didn’t even realize what was wrong with me until I was confronted with how it was making me act toward my loved ones. It’s easy to feel like every little thing going wrong is the end of the world until you step back, look at it from afar and evaluate it. This song is part of what helped me realize it was all sort of exaggerated.
I covered the singles and my favorite song here but every single track on the record has its own flair. “Ryn” has a very different hook and while we do go back to the math influence it feels darker and slows down at just the right second. It even ends with a guitar solo backed by a double time beat and is a nice grab bag of sounds and risks. “Picture Perfect Pixels” has a very different bass tone, and they even throw in a bossa nova section toward the end. And of course, there’s still so many cutting lyric sections to be heard, the bridge to “Catastrophe” being a prime example.
There was a time to talk about it and that ship has crashed.
They didn’t know their kid was floating and they were too.
So I stare at that inner child in the mirror and say;
Baby you did the best you could.
I went back to my old method for this one. Like the old original AsterTracks method. The 2021, “this is borderline a Beach Bunny stan account” method. I sat on the album for a week, I dedicated my day off from work to taking notes in my notebook, writing the review and just being in it as a whole. Behind the scenes I’ve been thinking a lot about if there’s any point to doing any of this anymore, but there is. It’s records like this. It’s bands who care enough to write them. I talk with my partner a lot about never wanting to be so stuck in one thing and hoping your artistic tastes grow and change. But in the case of albums like this, my childhood self, my pre-transition self, my still in RI self would have loved this as much as the woman in the Pacific Northwest I am today. At least, I’d like to think she would. Every song here is as much of itself as it is part of the entire void. There’s no flaws, there’s no blemish, it’s a perfect debut. To Jaime, Josef, Ryan, Santino and Sierra; thank you. For letting me have this early, for reminding me I am a part of the community, and for writing it at all.
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