Crash of Rhinos
Knots

The heart. A muscle that functions on its own, without needing to be told anything. A muscle that keeps us alive, warms us, makes us think. Without a heart, there's no emotion, and without emotions, music couldn't exist. That's why we love listening to music. That's why we can't do without music. Because we want to experience the vivid and powerful emotions within our hearts.

It's hard to remain impassive while listening to "Knots", the second album from the English band Crash Of Rhinos. Eleven sweaty, muscular, dramatic, and violent tracks. Intense lyrics made of phrases that fill the eyes with tears and the brain with passions long gone.

The power of "Opener" is impossible to restrain. Two basses, drums played as if they were two, a hoarse voice that seems on the brink of breaking into a cry of angry melancholy. "Interiors" digs even deeper into the bowels and throws our adult being elsewhere, leaving us for a few minutes to our adolescent side, which we wanted to hide too soon. Soul, bones, and muscles merge, dialogue, interact, and cause emotions to gush forth. The emotions of a time when we went to high school hunched over with a backpack too heavy, when our only constant thought was to appear cool in front of the girl we secretly loved. When we listened to Fugazi and Sunny Day Real Estate and smothered our discomfort into the pillow in our bedroom.

Crash Of Rhinos tread onto emo, post-hardcore, and math territories. Genres perhaps outdated, perhaps too "for kids," but ultimately make even us, not kids anymore, feel emotions. Along with their colleagues The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, they're breathing new life into this music, raising the bar of quality higher than one could imagine.

The lengthy "Impasses" and the subsequent "Mannheim" make you want to loop them, listen to them over and over without anyone disturbing us. We hear the counter-voice in the background, contrasting with the delicate solo voice and feel something unstoppable, debilitating, absurdly wonderful. The guitars rise, vibrate, and make the limbs vibrate. They rise again, increase in volume, and then explode. They explode within us, and we let them, allowing them to open our hearts again and make us relive distant moments we regret. Moments that marked us, that hurt us. Moments that made us who we are today.

Never a dull moment in this album, never a moment of emptiness. Fifty-two minutes of the most engaging of this year, precious minutes that must be savored. The melancholic and slow "Lean Out" strongly reminds us of Death Cab For Cutie, from their beautiful "Transatlanticism" of ten years ago. Ten years ago, just when we spent sleepless nights, sitting on the window sill watching out, observing the desolate city lights, thinking about what to do with our lives. And then the finale arrives. As in all true stories, the finale is the most overwhelming, the most emotional, and the one that makes you pour out everything you've been warming inside for years and let cool once grown up. "Speeds Of Ocean Greyhounds" are six and a half minutes in which we realize, if we still had doubts, the enormous ability of Crash Of Rhinos to make sincere, powerful, true music. Gut music that doesn't look at technique but lets the flow of layered notes serve as an indissoluble bond between us and it. Because deep down, the closest bond there is, is indeed the one between us, our past and present life, and music.

The heart. Nothing would exist without a heart. This album is made with heart, makes the heart beat, and lets the heart command our lives.