THE SYNN REPORT (PART 173): RESPIRE

Recommended for fans of: Envy, Alcest, Mono

This edition of The Synn Report may be a few days late, but since I’ve been waiting a long time to write about this particular band – ever since I first stumbled across their fantastic third album, Black Line, in early 2021, in fact – what’s a few days more?

Blending influences from Post-Hardcore (Envy, Refused, Pg.99), Post-Rock (Mono, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor), and Post-Black Metal (Alcest, Deafheaven, Dawn Ray’d) – which collectively range even further afield to draw from Prog, Screamo, and Shoegaze – the group’s orchestral “post-everything” approach has been blurring genre boundaries for the last decade, with each successive album further showcasing both the breadth of the band’s creative vision and the depth of emotion they’re able to conjure from their instruments.

And with the recent release of their fourth full-length, Hiraeth, now seemed like the perfect time to finally make good on my promise to one day give them their due here at NCS.

2016 – GRAVITY AND GRACE

Sombre instrumental intro “Pitter Patter” – all shimmering strings and mournful horns – begins the band’s debut album in poignant, Post Rock style, before the surging, Post-Black meets Post-Hardcore of “Ascent” makes a full and proper introduction to the group’s eclectic style, juxtaposing blastbeat driven anguish and proggy introspection as it ebbs and flows from collapse to crescendo, and back again, over the course of just under seven sublime minutes.

The interplay of melody and distortion, ambience and atmosphere – all building to a cathartic climax – which makes up the majority of “Eternal Light” then continues to demonstrate just how intricately, and intimately, arranged all the different pieces of the band’s multifaceted sound, balancing the normal array of guitars/drums/bass with additional elements and embellishments from trumpet, glockenspiel, cello, saxophone, and more, while the stripped-down structure and truly electrifying energy of “Waltz” also showcases that the band are capable of doing just as much with a lot less.

The rich melodic layering of the title-track then gives the listener, and the band, a little more room to breathe, before the epic “Eternal Nothing” – nine minutes of powerful, yet poignant, Post-Hardcore infused Post Rock that balances both keening contemplation and raging emotion in equal measure – raises the bar once again.

Finally, the climactic “Evening, Melancholy” is then split into three parts, the first delivering five mournful minutes of brooding cleans and bitter, biting screams, followed by a bright, three minute burst of Post-Black meets Post Rock power, before concluding – in suitably spellbinding style – with the solemn strains of the trilogy’s eloquent, expressive finale which in turn sets the stage for the next phase of the band’s ongoing evolution.

2018 – DENOUEMENT

The band’s second album is a crisper, cleaner, but no less cathartic beast, as quickly demonstrated by opener “Bound”, wherein the group’s artful amalgam of Post-Black, Post-Rock, and Post-Hardcore influences – combining the seething energy of the former and the raw emotion of the latter with the sublime sonic textures of the other – is drawn together even more seamlessly and organically, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that they’ve incorporated an even wider variety of instruments and collaborators this time around.

Early highlight “Haunt”, for example, incorporates both synths and subtle saxophone sequences into a song which errs more towards the doomier and more atmospheric end of the Black Metal spectrum than anything else they’ve written so far, while “Shiver” initially goes down an equally dark, but more Post-Hardcore adjacent, path, only to take an unexpected left turn into pure Prog territory halfway through, before exploding back into life once again for the song’s captivating conclusion

The band then bring an altogether lighter touch to the proceedings with the shimmering atmospherics and glimmering melodies (both string and brass, acoustic and distorted) of “Bloom”, before the moody slow-burn, subtly discordant strings, and stunning climax of “Catacombs” introduce an even more nuanced balance and contrast between light and shade.

On “Virtue” the band first lean into the more “orchestral” and Post-Rock focussed side of their sound, letting the extended family of strings and brass take the lead for a while until the song transitions into a rippling cascade of Post-Black/Post-Screamo/Post-… whatever, catharsis.

The heart-racing drums and heart-rending melodies of “A Heart Still Pines” – part metallic, part acoustic, part subtly symphonic – then set the stage for the solemn, sax-infused instrumental strains of the title-track which, fittingly, serves as the soothing dénouement of an album which has firmly established Respire as a band not quite like any other.

2020 – BLACK LINE

As I stated at the beginning, Black Line has been a favourite of mine for some time now (even if I didn’t discover it, or the band themselves, until a little after the album’s release) and returning to it for this piece has only helped reaffirm this feeling.

Both more boldly “orchestral” (as the album intro, “Blight”, reveals) and significantly heavier and more aggressive (“Tempest” is four minutes of blistering, string-embellished Blackened Hardcore, in all but name, which builds to a poignantly proggy Post-Rock crescendo) it feels like everything about the band is that little bit bigger and more emphatic, yet still as perfectly balanced as ever.

The opening of “Cicatrice”, for examples hits harder (and heavier) than pretty much everything that preceded it – leaning heavily into the harsher, more Screamo-influenced side of the band – yet the song swiftly evolves into something else entirely, aching ambience giving way first to a torrent of raw, blackened rage and then to a climactic series of massive guitars and gloomily grandiose grooves, all flowing smoothly into and out of one another as the track progresses, after which the outstanding “Lost Virtue” (half brooding Post-Rock build-up, half blistering Post-Black heart-break) somehow manages to hit you, right in the emotions, even harder.

The gorgeous “Kindling” then serves as a sort of fire-break in the middle of the album, allowing you a chance to collect your thoughts before the massive, crashing chords and moody, noir-ish darkness of “Embers to End” – whose abrasive, anxiety-inducing second half finds the band effortlessly shapeshifting between reckless intensity, moody calm, and pounding heaviness – rearrange and redefine your expectations of who Respire are and what they’ve capable of.

Moving into the final third of the album, the melancholy Post-Rock and melodic Post-Hardcore fusion of “Flicker and Faint” finds the band deep in their feelings once again, weeping strings and wounded screams interwoven with bombastic riffs and emphatic cleans, with the unexpectedly upbeat Screamo anthem of “To Our Dead Friends” then showing off another side of the group that is somehow both more visceral, and more vulnerable, at the same time, only for “Catacombs Part II” to pack arguably even more emotion, and more multi-layered, intricately arranged, instrumentation, into the album’s final not-quite-seven minutes than anything else on the record (which is no small feat).

2024 – HIRAETH

For their fourth album (which was only released last week) the group wisely seem to have decided not to simply try and replicate the sound or success of Black Line but instead have put more emphasis on the more esoteric and orchestral elements of their distinctly diverse style, with opener “Keening” pushing the strings, sax, and trumpet (and more) to even greater prominence, while still retaining that uniquely atmospheric and emotional “Post-Screamo” approach which has become their trademark.

That’s not to say sacrificed any of their energy, or their edge, in the process – “The Match, Consumed” is a wild ride which lights a fire under the band’s anguished, Blackened Emo-Core (or whatever you want to call it), while the eccentrically proggy “Distant Light of Belonging” balances anthemic atmosphere and weighty Post-Rock rhythms with injections of uncompromising intensity – but you can definitely tell, especially during the likes of the simmering, shimmering “First Snow”, that the group have devoted even more time and effort to ensuring every single instrument, whether electric or acoustic, sting or brass, has the space it needs.

The clever contrast and collaboration between clean and harsh vocals has also clearly been given a lot more attention, as demonstrated by the crooning calls and cathartic cries of poignant Post-Rock-meets-Post-Hardcore mini-epic (and mid-album highlight) “Home of Ash”, while the multifaceted melodic magic of “Voiceless; Nameless” further emphasises the intricate interplay between the band at their most heartfelt, heaviest, and haunting at different moments.

“The Sun Sets Before Us” provides yet another gorgeous, gripping dose of orchestral Prog-Emo (again, that description is just a vague approximation, so don’t take it as gospel) which puts equal emphasis on punky energy and proggy melody, after which the progressive post-genre hybrid of “We Grow Like Trees in Rooms of Borrowed Light” offers the sort of long-form slow-burn which ultimately pays off with a suitably soaring, soul-stirring crescendo.

And finally, with the climactic pairing of the melancholy Post-Hardcore magic of “Do the Birds Still Sing” and the moving Post-Rock minimalism of “Farewell (In Standard)”, the group fully prove that their sound truly transcends genre boundaries, ending things on a note of both hope and despair that will, hopefully, resonate with at least some of our readers… no matter what they’re into.