THIS DAY FORWARD

Band: THIS DAY FORWARD

Genres: Punk / Metalcore / Hardcore / Rock / Post-Hardcore / Alternative
Related artists: Superstitions Of The Sky, Circa Survive and Marigold.
Country: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
Years Active: 1996-2003
Song: "White Picket Defense System"
Album: "In Response"
Year: 2003
Label(s): Eulogy Recordings / War Machine Records / Equal Vision Records
This post's artist is from the April 2015 Mix. This is track #7.
You can download: the May Mix#5 right here or get the new June 2015 Mix#6 here.
For fans of: Converge, Alexisonfire, Lamantide, Thursday, Fear Before The March Of Flames, Hopesfall, Nionde Plågan, Jude The Obscure, Jiyuna, (early) Forstella Ford, Boy Sets Fire, Saosin, Circa Survive, Bright Calm Blue, Codeseven, Versus The Mirror, The End, In Reverent Fear and The Bled.

THIS DAY FORWARD will forever be one of the primary bands that helped me find my voice. Let me explain. In university I was trying to strengthen my voice and and practice developing my range so I would jam this song and do a vocal cover over the track. I did maybe 25 takes over a year which helped lead to the voice I have today. That was barely even a story. Enough about me and my encounters with "White Picket Defense System"

The band went through a myriad of changes although the members pretty much stayed the same. On 1999's 'Fragments of an Untold Story Born by Shunning the Opportunity' and 2000's 'The Transient Effects of Light on Water' THIS DAY FORWARD are pure metalcore. Imagine Converge and Hopesfall as wild, rabid dogs mating on a deserted street in broad daylight. The instrumentals are generally dropping mad breakdowns or noodling across some palm-muted playful stuff. The vocals are banshee screaming with some lower end stuff, but in the end Mike Shaw sounds a hell of a lot like Jacob Bannon's earlier work in Converge. This is a great overall album but it can seem a bit monotonous at times, as every track save for "If I Wore a Mask" sounds interchangeable to me. "If I Wore a Mask" is my favourite and most memorable heavy THIS DAY FORWARD song that includes the whispered "If I...wore a mask...I could...rule the world," and then brings breakdowns down aplenty. "Writing in Cursive" could easily be a Jiyuna song, especially with that bass led breakdown at 1:30. "End of August" is another stellar slap in the face while "The Effects of Departure from Ideal Proportions" has some of the best and more interesting breakdowns. Their 1999 effort is okay but isn't worth discussing in my opinion because their 2000 LP built on their initial formula and fine tuned it.

It was at this point that the band added Vadim Taver to the mix and band really began to evolve away from metalcore and toward rock.

My cherished THIS DAY FORWARD album is most definitely 2002's 'Kairos' EP. The title track "Kairos" wastes no time in showing the band's shift from metalcore to a very interesting post-hardcore/metal with a lot more of his patented talk/sing style and is probably the strongest song. He dips in and out of this style throughout the five cuts and replaces it with a fair amount of screaming and the occasional melodic singing. Speaking of melodic singing their friend Geoff Rickley from Thursday and United Nations laid down some sweet vocals on the fantastic "Sunfalls and Watershine". "Isomorphism" is as good as "Kairos" but for a much different reason, as this song focuses on being the mutated offspring that delves only into the band's two extremes. It opens with a beautifully sung intro and soft guitars before bringing in screaming and well placed breakdowns. "Allegory of the Cave" is another killer choice that includes some bouncier instrumentals and a really catchy, screamy part that begins at 49 seconds and is topped at 1:28 with "Take these standards, built like buildings and tear them down. Rebuild. Rebuild!". This cd reminds me of a very earthy and natural record and is certainly the band's crowning achievement, in my eyes...errrr, ears.

The band's final foray into music and melody came in the form of 2003's 'In Response'. This opens with one of the harder songs and probably the best overall song "White Picket Defense System". It's a sassy post-hardcore romp with great lyrics, excellent vocal placement, talking, singing and screaming. My favourite part would have to be the lyrics and vocals at 0:58 "Savage. Savage etiquette. Courted by, courted by the cannibals. Oh how unfortunate that we've become the animals as hope dilate beyond the peripheral." The next really good track doesn't drop in until track four which is titled "In the Past ... On the Ground" and is a dreamy number at the beginning but soon becomes a very aggressive track that easily could have ended up on 'Kairos'. After the screaming comes a nice, melodic passage with some really cool riffs and excellent singing, as Mike really perfected his clean stuff on this record. "Fragile Version" is easily the catchiest and strongest melodic track on the album, which is nearly saturated by some mediocre post-hardcore/rock but THIS DAY FORWARD were most likely striving for this particular sound and were able to capture it on this song, which really suits their newer, non-Converge style. "Nouveau" is a biting and seething trip that is the darkest of all the songs on 'In Response', with some dips into melody and great lyrics, "begin again as if you never began".

So there you have it. And here it is again in a nutshell, THIS DAY FORWARD underwent a stylistic shift that was great at both ends but was the strongest when the band straddled the middle.

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DISCOGRAPHY
Click )==>here<==( to download the band's complete discography in mp3 form.

1999 - Fragments of an Untold Story Born by Shunning the Opportunity cdEP

2000 - The Transient Effects of Light on Water cd/3x7"LP

2002 - Kairos cdEP

2003 - In Response cdLP

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(2003) THIS DAY FORWARD - "White Picket Defense System" (from 'In Response')

(2003) THIS DAY FORWARD - "Nouveau" (from 'In Response')

(2003) THIS DAY FORWARD - "In the Past ... On the Ground" (from 'In Response')

(2002) THIS DAY FORWARD - "Kairos" (from 'Kairos')

(2002) THIS DAY FORWARD - "Isomorphism" (from 'Kairos')

(2000) THIS DAY FORWARD - "If I Wore a Mask" (from 'The Transient Effects of Light on Water')

(2000) THIS DAY FORWARD - "End of August" (from 'The Transient Effects of Light on Water')

(1999) THIS DAY FORWARD - "Arise" (from 'Fragments of an Untold Story Born by Shunning the Opportunity')

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THIS DAY FORWARD out of print mp3 discography download

(download here)

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