Every once in a while, a band comes along that completely change the game. The sort of band who raises the stakes so high that everyone around them is left in the dust with their tails between their legs and their below-par riffs dangling like wet lettuce. Night Verses are one of those bands. Pushing the boundaries so hard that they cracked, their debut full length ‘Lift Your Existence’ saw post hardcore stand up and start taking notes. Now with follow up ‘Into The Vanishing Light’, the Long Island quartet will be looking to stamp even more authority on the genre they are rewriting the rule book to.

They do, by the way.

From the very first second of the disastrously throbbing ‘The Future Is History: I Love You Dead’, Night Verses are on to an absolute winner. The music they craft brings to life every emotion your body can muster and pokes and prods at it till it can’t take anymore. The moments of piercing clarity chill the blood to almost freezing while the jabs of sporadic noise feel like fire running through your pores. This is music to feel alive to.

‘Drift’ brings the pace down to a hauntingly somber pace before ‘A Dialogue Of Cataplexy’ spasms with crisp guitar solos and creepy yelps of energy and the delicately pulsing ‘Strange Graves’ lingers with a darkened presence. All culminating in the raging epic that is ‘Phoenix III: Into The Vanishing Light’, Night Verses hold nothing back and deliver a fitting and devastating conclusion to an album that blends the most sensitive and apocalyptic elements of post hardcore in the most intriguing, engrossing and vibrant manner they could possibly conjure.

Night Verses are unlike any other band you have ever heard. As brittle as a twig one second and as destructive as a goliath the next, the band take you on a twisted yet phenomenal journey to the deepest and darkest confines of your mind and pit you against the shadows that lurk there. They push your senses to their breaking point yet pull you back in just before you topple over the edge. This is how music should always be. It should be hard to swallow but even harder to ignore. It should deeply unsettling but also impossible to resist indulging in. ‘Into The Vanishing Light’ is pretty much as good as it gets.

4.5/5

’Into the Vanishing Light’ by Night Verses is out on 8th July via Graphic Nature/Equal Vision.

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Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)