Audio By Carbonatix
“What is it/This anger dissected?” wails Gabe Shapiro of Volante in the song “Everybody Loses.” Little does he know, he’s already answered his own question. “Anger dissected” pretty much nails his band’s sound: a surgically wrought revelation of buried strife, a biopsy of amputated desires and in-grown rage. When Volante hit the scene with 2001’s 45 Degrees North, the Minneapolis quartet already had its tensions locked in and fed through a thresher of Midwestern post-punk from outfits like Boys Life and Braid. But its new disc, Static Until Sunrise, is both sharper and more subdued, a clenched gut torn between lacerating guitars and a twinge of tightly lidded turmoil. The group has been canvassing Colorado’s basements and bars for the last three years, and its live show is appropriately sweaty, visceral and passionate. The players flail with precision as they fire fragments of riffs and rhythms out of their instruments; meanwhile, Shapiro — by no means a little guy — sneaks in soaring melodies and falsetto whispers around his brawny, lumbering bass lines. There’s nothing remotely hip or name-droppable about Volante — just a blast of chiseled noise and a cathartic dose of pure, uncut emotion.
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