Reviews : Albums : A Long Winter, "Breathing Underwater"

A four song EP recorded in September 2000, and not mastered and released until January 2003? What happened guys? Anyway, the now defunct A Long Winter play(ed) metallic tinged hardcore, with a big dose of screamo laced with some Midwestern era 1995 hardcore. This is overall a decent CD.

Track one, "Too Far to Fly," starts a little Zao-ish, much as I expected, because 80% of metalcore bands are trying to be Zao II; very quickly however, the song, and the rest of the disc, mellow out, doing the whole clean vocals, emotional rocking out thing. More of a straightforward use of chord progression, and not a just chugga/chugga/harmonic breakdown for two minutes, I am hearing a little of an Empathy influence, even though I bet these kids have never heard Empathy. I am such an elitist, sorry. I am actually digging this a little bit, surprising, considering I washed my hands of hardcore for the most part many moons ago. Track 3 is the most metal of the disc, sounding like Zao again, with some clean vocals thrown in, and a really sloppy e-chord breakdown in the middle. Track 4 has a really good melody line under the rhythm, and sounds like old Poison the Well, but the breakdown and arpeggios around the 2 minute mark ruin the song. They just sound goofy.

Overall, I think that "Breathing Underwater" is decent, mostly because it doesn't sound like Hatebreed, or the plethora of bands trying to mix Swedish death metal with bad screamo. A better production would have been nice, as would tighter playing, and tighter song writing. These dudes try to tackle about 6 or 7 genres of hardcore in only 4 songs and it is just not working. Oh well, seeing as how they appear to be broken up (the liner notes allude to this) I don't guess it matters. Nice effort, though. Killer layout.

Standout Tracks    These Eyes Will Remember    Just One Kiss

Justin.S