Album Review: Watch Out Stampede – Tides

Ryan October 11, 2015 208 Comments 124 views 0 likes

When it comes to many bands, I tend to avoid listening to singles when I know an album is around the corner or not terribly far from release. I would rather hear an album in full as one complete piece rather than bit by bit. Going into this review, I hadn’t listened to any of the singles released by Watch Out Stampede for their latest album, Tides, so I was inherently taken aback when I first started listening to the album.

Opening up with a very somber acoustic guitar and violin piece, “50_50” surprisingly sets the mood for the remainder of the album. As the track builds, you can definitely tell something is coming, and that something comes fast, furious and hard-hitting. Andreas (the screamer) explodes onto the song and maintains his high energy throughout not only the song, but the album as a whole. That can honestly be said for the whole band during the entirety of the album; it is full of high energy octane and not one song loses that edge or energy that the band seemingly creates so easily. While you do get a bit of a break with a beautifully arranged interlude that once again starts off melodic; it builds up nicely and brings the energy at the end and into the next song beautifully.

Watch Out Stampede – No Confidence (Official Video)

Official video of our single “No Confidence”, taken from the upcoming album TIDES out on September 25th, 2015. http://www.facebook.com/watchoutstampede Video produced by Marian Steckling. http://www.facebook.com/stecklingfilms Many thanks to Daniel for the awesome location and Sebastian for realising this outstanding light show at the shooting! Music recorded, mixed & mastered by Malte Brück.

While the sound is definitely typical of the post hardcore scene, the album is very atypical. What I mean by this is that the album is a complete whole; the music and songs seamlessly flow and there is a very obvious structure and theme behind the album. Typically, many albums in todays age seem very pieced together. It is very common for an album to have 2-3 singles as stand out tracks and the rest just feels like filler; the concept of the songs may be good, but the effort, energy and execution in creating the music doesn’t necessarily seem to fit with the rest of the album. Tides is an album that schematically detracts from that; and that is a very good thing.

If you are a fan of high-octane, in your face music that continuously is pushing forward and never slows down, Tides is definitely an album you need to listen to. It may be a typical post hardcore sound with the split of screamed verses and melodic choruses sprinkled with breakdowns, but it has that extra bit of oomph that pushes it out of the realm of overly generic and with the large amount of bands that never get out of that realm, it is what will continue to help set Watch Out Stampede grow as artists and evolve in an ever-growing genre of music.

[tw-toggle title=”About Watch Out Stampede”]
• Genre: Post Hardcore
• Label: Noizgate Records
• Release Date: September 25, 2015
• Connect: Facebook | Twitter
• Purchase: iTunes
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