Moss Icon
Lyburnum

Great D. Disillusionment, Destabilization. Great S. Imbalance, Stigma. Great E. Exasperation. Great O. Obsessiveness.

Like a small aggregate of dust floating in a room, revealing its presence only with dimmed lights and a reduced beam of light entering from a window, Moss Icon is noticed only with a nearby light source. But then, there was no light. Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly was recorded in 1988 but saw the light, saw the light but remained in the shadows in 1994 and in 1997 returned with its haunting presence, Lyburnum, with 4 added tracks compared to 3 years earlier. All this happened already after everything was over. Already posthumous. Then someone decides that Moss Icon and their recorded material are a milestone of early Emotional Hardcore, but there's a problem: the Emocore label was never as tight on a band as it was on Moss Icon and here we are no longer in the pre-Fugazi but in the very early Fugazi period. In fact, Moss Icon managed to play together with Fugazi.

Here you don't feel just a re-proposition of Rites of Spring's style or a sort of Indian Summer before Indian Summer, Lyburnum is strange, absurd, destabilizing. Not as direct as would be implied, too intellectual and convoluted but also too politicized and angry to be defined as simple Emocore. The immediacy is there initially, the simple hc punk of Mirror, but things begin to degenerate right after and you enter a tunnel of paranoia, insomnia, dusty and crooked riffs alternating with sweet but rough arpeggios at the same time, builders of an unnatural and disturbing calm, exactly like the eye of a cyclone that is right in the middle of the disturbance zone hosting the strongest winds. Right after, in fact, comes I'm Back Sleeping or Fucking or Something, almost stoner and infectiously psych, and given this is a group with Hardcore Punk derivation from the start, it would be a sort of Sludge (?), kind of saying that the Melvins listened to these guys but it was only 1988 and therefore this thing must not be said. And it's also very close to a certain Seattle sound, even if here we are in Maryland, so much Grunge before Grunge, with dragging and understated parts and sudden outbursts, spoken word and screams. There's the rawer Post-Punk, Joy Division making an incursion into Locket and Kick The Can, and the semi-acoustic imbalance of As Afterwards The Words Still Ring.

Culmination of all this spastic madness is the seventh track: Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly: eleven minutes on a record that until then hadn't gone beyond 4, eleven minutes surrounded by a spectral and psychedelic aura, almost a jam that drives away any light source and immerses everything in a luciferian atmosphere with an almost ceremonial rhythm section, arpeggios in an unstable crescendo that at times remind of a morbid version of Slowcore, as if they were the Codeine brothers who, however, replace narcolepsy and sadness with rage. And then there's the spoken word recitation of a caustic anti-sermon: “To lose a young life in these trying times is truly not an unheard of thing/Ah, but the false truth and always lie of a dead God will surely take out some of the sting”. It seems Lyburnum is a fictional god created by the band. And it all makes sense. Metaphoric esotericism, antitheism, a desire to drain every dogmatism. And so yes: "LYBURNUM COVER ME you're singing and i'm being pulled in this sanctuary is our god and our secret pond under this wing we lie deaf and thinking about the singing under this tree this garden this pond is our sanctuary i have now realized the wit's end liberation fly".

They have always denied having had such a significant influence on the Post-Hardcore scene, or however one wants to call it, but the fact is this: whether it inspired a large number or an insignificant number of groups, Lyburnum remains the magnum opus of a handful of unique artists.