Night Verses: Lift Your Existence

Melancholic thrills from bi‐coastal post‐rock wayfarers

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Night Verses frontman Doug Robinson cut his teeth with angsty yet playful melodic hardcore pups The Sleeping, but it’s immediately apparent with Lift Your Existence that the Long Islander is all grown up and on the form of his life.

The new band, a bi-coastal collaboration between Robinson and Californians Nick DePirro, Reilly Herrera and Aric Improta, are a much more insular proposition, opener Elucidation setting out their stall with a beautiful, dynamic cloud of Deftones-style sighs and minor-key melancholy.

But that oppressive sadness is only half of the story. There’s plenty of excitement to be found here too. Improta’s frequent meteor showers of percussion rain down on claustrophobically howling, juddering riffs, the band switching from darkly sensitive to focused, snarled aggression and back again, Phoenix I, Rising II, Falling stretching luxuriously across 10 gorgeous, tech-tinged minutes.

Draw the curtains and turn down the lights because dark nights of the soul sound great right now.

Emma has been writing about music for 25 years, and is a regular contributor to Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog and Louder. During that time her words have also appeared in publications including Kerrang!, Melody Maker, Select, The Blues Magazine and many more. She is also a professional pedant and grammar nerd and has worked as a copy editor on everything from film titles through to high-end property magazines. In her spare time, when not at gigs, you’ll find her at her local stables hanging out with a bunch of extremely characterful horses.