Envy
Breathing and Dying in this Place

THE REVIEW

The absolute debut of the Japanese band Envy is completed in about 15 minutes.

15 minutes. The duration of "The Unknown Glow," a track taken from "Insomniac Doze," released ten years after this first EP. The Envy that became known and turned into a legend within their circles don't exist yet. We have to wait a few more years for them to start unveiling their best blows. In the first decade, they will develop a mutable and refined style, teetering between the crescendos and atmospheres of the best of the best Post Rock out there and the urgency of Screamo, a genre still in its embryonic phase at the time of this first work, accompanying everything with evocative lyrics in their native language (I'm referring to the English translations, I don't know a word of Japanese). Indeed, the explosions and melodic and atmospheric openings that made Envy so famous and loved by different audiences are not here yet, there isn't time. The creature that would later dominate unchallenged is only at its first uncertain cries, the legs tremble, the step is not yet firm.

Here, the tracks never surpass two and a half minutes. "Breathing And Dying in this Place" is a simple punk hardcore record, with a rough production, a record that doesn't yet stand out on the scene however, as much as it's still respectable. Tetsuya doesn't sing anything spoken word yet, his singing is forceful but not as much as that of the bands from the scene that was simultaneously taking its first steps across the Pacific Ocean. We are faced with the most driven and chaotic version of the Tokyo band, the same we meet in the first full-length "From Here to Eternity" and especially in the EP "The Eyes of a Single Eyed Prophet" (probably the best chapter of the first phase of their career), even though the intensity and urgency of these latter works are not even remotely noticeable in this first effort, which lacks the emotion and even the class that a fan who discovered the band with "A Dead Sinking Story" might expect. It is also astonishing that Envy, over the time separating their first studio work from their first album, managed to make such a significant leap in quality, something that can only be seen as the prelude to a phenomenal career.

The beginning of a long journey towards perfection.