Though the craft of the album has arguably been lost on many-with the influx of single iTunes purchases and an increasing push for musicians to get tracks out as fast as fans can download them, standing amid the rubble of what remains in honest record making is Long Island band Sleep Bellum Sonno.
With their 2009 sophomore release, Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living, the three-piece continued to uphold their reputation for experimentation and focus. Sleep Bellum Sonno is not your run of the mill sound by any means- a little bit indie and a whole lot post-hardcore, this is a band unafraid of exploration, that is willing to push both its musical producing ability as well as the listening skill of its listeners.
Pinning down a direct comparison of this band, let alone this album is difficult to do, but if we had to give a verbal-only example of their sound, we’d have to mention bands such as Mewithoutyou, La Dispute, and The Smashing Pumpkins. From their penchant for spoken/shouted vocals, to the intense and nontraditional instrumentation, that somehow comes out with a chiming softness beneath it all, these Eastern Seaboard musicians truly step out of the box in their melody making.
The concept behind Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living is one that spins the tale of twelve different characters leading separate lives until they are linked through the story of one man leaving his wife and two children. Each track comes to the listener through the perspective of a character, its title aptly parenthesized with the character’s occupation, offering a further explanation of their connection to the story.
As a whole this album is impressive not only for it’s weighty lyrical content, which relates its cast of characters to one another in a way that isn’t overly obvious or overly subliminal, but also for its format. One would expect a concept album to be best listened to as a whole, but Sleep Bellum Sonno takes that notion a step further in their arrangement and layout choices for these twelve tracks.
Offering a variety of styles and speeds within it, Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living goes everywhere from simple harmonica to eerily distorted sounds and around the bend to wailing guitar riffs. There’s an organic sense of fluidity in even the most chaotic pieces of music available on this album, which may be due to the fact that Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living was recorded live. Absent is the influence of production or artificial additions, and that natural sort of rawness does nothing but add to the dark, anguishing subject matter of a family fallen apart.
One of our favorite tracks, “The Town Will Tell You Of What Grew From Our Home. (Gardener) Balances Sleep Bellum Sonno’s strong yells with a softer instrumentation complete with gentle horns and cymbal based percussion. Other tracks also offer those elements of a slow down, such as “As Long As My Voice Holds, You Will Be My Song. (Singer) and “When I Quit, You Can Put Dirt On Me. (Harvester), which while still bouncy with his nearly bluegrass/rockabilly rhythms, doesn’t include the same screeching and yelling found in other parts of the album.
Though the consideration and intricacies put into this full-length are undeniable, at first listen there does some to be a bothersome similarity between the instrumentals in a few of the tracks. It’s not until further inspection is made in a 2nd or 3rd listen that the subtle and oh-so-specific differences are fully noticed.
Lyrically, note has to be made of the previously mentioned concept within a concept, in which portraits of these independent beings are given while all chipping in to paint the larger picture of two sons and a mother losing the head of their household. While some parts of the story are based on real events, and the differentiation between fact or fiction becomes blurred in this saga, the most true part of Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living really is merely the fact that these three musician’s pushed themselves in a creative direction most can’t even fathom attempting to go in.
Though the idea of artistic, conceptualized, post-rock might be a bit more than some can chew, for those brave enough to try and decipher it, Judge Us By How We Lived Our Lives Not By How We Made Our Living offers a series of intricacies and poetic prose sure to go down smoothly once its intent is understood.
As of March 9th the band is on an East Coast Tour with Rapid Cities- Visit SleepBellumSonno.com for full dates or check out this video:
