Reviews for [RL20]
Empty Silos Echo War "Inner Working Mechanics of a Failed Construct with Puritan Cement"

• Under the Volcano #87
  "Empty Silos Echo War are a Stony Brook/Setauket band that play trippy, psychedelic Indie Rock with stream of consciousness lyrics. The vocalist sounds like The Cure's Robert Smith singing in his sleep, while the music could be on the Temporary Residence label-there are loose, repetitive rhythms, and hypnotic swirling guitars that evoke atavistic memories. The packaging is really neat too-there's a hand folded colored paper insert and a lyric booklet in the same style. Really cool stuff that's off the beaten path." -Rich Black
  
  
  
  
• Skratch Magazine 9/05
  Ever discover a band or album that you just can't recommend to everyone due to the fact that it's a bit too "different" for mass acceptance? After listening to INNER WORKING MECHANICS OF A FAILED CONSTRUCT, it's safe to say this album is "different." This disc will take you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. One second you get suckered into a false security with a soft harmony filled with almost subsonic sounds, and the next second you are being slammed about by harsh vocals and heavy guitars and drum beats. This album is also quite versatile, as evinced on "We Share a Frequency", with its funked-out guitars and catchy lyrics. If you have an open mind to eclectic music, I'd say check it out. You will either love or absolutely hate this album. -Matt Edlund
  
  
  
  
• Fountain Magazine 9/05
  Empty Silos Echo War plays Halifax Style Indie Rock only from New England. ESEW play a style of Indie rock that usually only comes out of Canada's East Coast. Picture North of America, mixed with Transistor Transistor, then mixed with At the Drive In and you'll know what to expect when you pop in this CD. One of the more free and creative releases I've heard in a while. I like it.
  
  
  
  
• Modern Fix #49
  It's safe to say that there is nothing unappreciable about the manly veracity beneath the jeans of Snake Plissken. After all, he's a prisoner, a decorated ex-soldier AND he's got a motherfucking eye patch. A nylon eye patch, which is far more durable than your regular synthetic models, easy to clean after it's stained with dead hooker blood and shit. And like a good eye patch, the durability of droning apocalyptic prog stoner jams is only truly appreciated by long sedated headphone sessions. And who is behind the doomful but hospitable indie rock that is Empty Silos Echo War? Nobody you'd recognize from other projects, but that's good...why? Because those half wits (you know who I am talking about) spend tgeir entire lives getting hand jobs because of the one good band they played in for seven years and bands like Empty Silos Echo War sit in their basement eating pizza, smoking weed and fucking jamming like Snake creeping across town towards the 69th street bridge. Slow, brooding and with an eye patch.
  
  
  
  
• All Night Eatery February 2006
  The first thing to recognize about Empty Silos Echo War is that they have a great band name. The next thing to recognize about them is they take all of your favorite indie bands and wrap them into one palatable, satisfying musical burrito. During some of quiet times (“Elephants Walking on a Bridge & Then it Fell”), they have a certain Xiu Xiu (far less abstract) feel. When the singing lets loose, an At the Drive In element is apparent. On more upbeat tracks like “We Share a Frequency” the thought of Q and not U enters the mind. However, calling Empty Silos a mixture of bands like those previously listed falls short of explanation. The album opens with a great delayed guitar effect and melancholy tone that builds slightly to the powerful colossus that is “Thin Blue Lipped Wind Wave of Nothing’s Goodbye”. Throughout the album there is a constant dark mechanical inner-working that is as eloquent as it is abrasive (man, it sounded like I straight up jacked that line from Rolling Stone or something). “Pipes and Pans” makes use of bells, horns, and static-laced audio to carry an otherwise boring melody into something surprisingly creative and consumable. “We Share a Frequency” is the catchiest song on the record. It is upbeat, danceable, and delicious. If you want to have a good time without the responsibility of listening to a less-than-simple record, just lend your ear to this song.When you try a new food for the first time that you end up enjoying you oftentimes recall it fondly. If you are addicted to the taste of a good meal like I am, you want to eat it again and again. Every time that you have the opportunity to eat it, you take up the offer. After a while, it becomes your comfort food. One day amid a mental breakdown (that probably has to do with being self-conscious because you eat too much… sigh...) you gorge yourself with the food while watching “Sideways” hoping that one day you can find a wonderful lady to start a California winery with. You eat so much that you find yourself planted face-first in the toilet (you suddenly remember that you should have cleaned it months ago). At that point you realize that you have had far too much of a good thing. Much like eating too much of a good food, sometimes Empty Silos piles on the creativity and abrasive sounds so thick that you say to yourself “That’s just too much”. It would be easy to classify this band as scarf-wearing pretentious dribble, but then you’d be a writer for Spin. I thoroughly enjoyed this album. -Thomas Irby
  
  
  
  
• Verbicide #16
  What starts off as hushed soundscapes explode into outrageously loud guitar, drum, and shouting matches of sound. This is no album — this is a catharsis. The most compelling thing on the entire release is the guitar riff on "We Share a Frequency." There’s a definite undercurrent of longing and rage in each and every song. (Sean Lambert)
  
  
  
  
• Half Gifts #10
  When pieced together just right, there's nothing more satisfying than a post rock crescendo, soaring in the saddle of skyward distortion and pummeling percussion. The key to priming the listener for such an impact is patience, a virtue of which Empty Silos Echo War are masters. The band settles into a sort of formula for each track on "Inner Working.." introducing the song's elements in order from most gentle to most brutal. "Thin Blue Lipped Wind Wave of Nothing's Goodbye" for example, opens with a warm, liquid guitar loop that is closely followed by humid peals of misty fuzz. The riffs turn chunky as hi-hats twinkle and two singers exchange lines, ultimately leading up to a whirlwind of blistering static and technical shredding that verges on heavy metal's bombast. Other tracks bear a no wave sense of atonality, like the noisy intro to "Pipes and Pans", accented by wheezing saxophone and unpredictable bursts of harsh noise. Balancing brute experimentation with in your face beauty, this album is a forgotten masterpiece, picking up where Louisville's Slint left of in 1991.