My Hair is a Rat's Nest - The Longing Machine

I have a soft spot in my heart for one-song albums. I've never done one myself, but I always respect the audacity and ambition that goes into trying to hold a listener's attention through a single, long, uninterrupted track. 

My Hair is a Rat's Nest, a largely one-person "screamo" (scare quotes because I have never liked that term) band, fills "The Longing Machine" with more than enough interesting twists and turns to make the one, nearly 25 minute long, song that composes the album interesting throughout. 

An almost shockingly broad array of influences seem to weave their way through the song. It starts out with some classically dissonant 90s style screamy hardcore, with angular riffs, busy drumming, and shrieked vocals. But, as the minutes click on, the song adds layer upon layer, bringing in lush atmosphere and textures to complement the more traditionally aggressive approach of its first few minutes. By the end of the track, My Hair is a Rat's Nest has deftly assembled a cascading pile of parts which both flow together seamlessly as well as keep the the listener on their toes, balancing the one-album song's demand for both coherence and diversity.

Put simply, this song is absolutely lousy with killer parts. 

Like a lot of things I review here, this one is free over at Bandcamp, so you should absolutely go pick it up. It is, hands down, some of the best music of this genre I've heard in years, and I'm really excited to give this a bunch of spins in the future.