You can call their hometown the neck of the woods when you realise If These Trees Could Talk are from Akron, Ohio. The five-member band has been around since 2005, honing a sound that has both delicate and destructive qualities. One of their best releases and claim-to-fames came in 2009, with Above the Earth , Below the Sky , which introduced many to just how dark instrumental music can get.
When it comes to labels, it’s fair to say If These Trees Could Talk is a post-rock and post-metal band. For those not in the know of this sub-genre, the best way to explain it is to tell you it is about using instruments set up for a rock band to play music that is far from it. On their third full-length album, The Bones of a Dying World , the band push themselves further – becoming more dissonant, more chaotic, yet gentle in their song structures. The nine-track album traverses through sonic territories that just make for an immersive experience.
While they start out with something more metal-leaning on ‘Solstice’, the rumbling technical drum fills adding to the noisy riffs, they immediately slow down on ‘Swallowing Teeth’ and pick back up again with full strength on one of the best tracks on the album, ‘Earth Crawler’. If These Trees Could Talk latch on to a guitar melody that just stays in your head, evoking a feeling of a realisation.
There are ethereal soundscapes layered over steady guitars on ‘After the Smoke Clears’ and the more interlude-like haunting beauty of ‘The Here and Hereafter’, but they bring the hammer down on the fittingly-titled ‘Iron Glacier’, the guitars blistering into action.
It can be argued that The Bones of a Dying World still stubbornly stays in the post-rock and post-metal safe zone, not really conjuring anything too different from their peers like Caspian and Pelican, but it is not just music for purists. The steady, well-crafted build-ups that lead to headrush-inducing crescendos can’t be nailed by every band all the time. But The Bones of a Dying World achieves that for the most part – whether you’re a fan of the sub-genre or not, this album will impress.
