Welcome the Plague Year’s 2004 debut, originally released by Electric Human Project and now issued through The Archivist, is a volatile post-hardcore record from Lexington. It comes from musicians connected to Makara, You and I, Neil Perry and Joshua Fit for Battle, and carries some of that scene’s familiar mix of hardcore force and emotional abrasion. The guitars drive hard, the drums hit with real urgency, and the vocals break into raw, strained outbursts without flattening the quieter passages.
The contrast is the point. “Behold a Pale Horse” and “Doomsday Parade” push forward with pummelling rhythms and heavy guitar layers, while “Quiet. Still. Dead.” pulls the volume back into something sparse and uneasy. “Interlude” and “Improvisation 1. Take 1.” give the record room to breathe, though the latter feels more like a rough document than a fully formed song. Moody melodies keep the attack from becoming one-note, and the shifts between restraint and full collapse give the roughly 40-minute set its shape. People coming from screamo, hardcore punk or post-rock will know the language, but the patient pacing and sudden quiet make this more than a straight blast of early-2000s heaviness.
