Nights Like These, in case you aren't familiar, was a band from Memphis, Tennessee from roughly 2003 until 2008 or so. I had the pleasure of doing a tour with them in the summer of 2006, right when this album was being released on Victory Records. Well, not this exact album, but these songs. I'll explain later.
Anyhow, they started the band when they were 14/15 and had been playing and continually refining the same set of songs since the inception of the band. When you listen to the tracks you can tell where they could have been written by younger kids due to their overall simplicity yet played with perfection due to constant fine-tuning and re-working. This album is a culmination of a few years of presumably hard work.
As for why I referenced earlier about this not being the EXACT release on Victory Records ... that is because this is an alternate version of the album that was actually released to the public. The band had self-funded this full length offering and had the intentions of self-releasing it until Victory got their hands on it. Victory told them they wanted to release the album but that this recording was too "raw". Keep in mind this was 2006 and being gritty and raw or whatever wasn't quite accepted in "mainstream" hardcore. Converge worship wasn't quite in full effect yet. Oh, the glory days. I digress.
The story goes that Victory sent the band back into the studio to "fix" the old recording by making them completely re-record it. It features the entire album plus two new tracks: "Ghost Town Ritual" and "Eternal Tempest". Oh yeah, and Victory presumably made them change one song name from Eggbeater Abortion to Memento Mori. This album was laid to the wayside never to be officially released. I promised the guys I wouldn't leak it at the time, but I'm thinking 4 years down the road and now that they are essentially disbanded that it would be OK. Either way, this album rules. Not that there is anything wrong with the version that Victory released, but whenever you play the two side by side there is an obvious champion.To no discredit to the guys in Nights Like These, the first thing I told them after seeing them on the tour we were on together was that they sounded EXACTLY like Premonitions Of War (a huge compliment in my mind). Not a single person in the band had ever heard of them (SAME LABEL!). While I was mildly blown away at their metalcore ignorance it made me like the band even more due to the fact that they weren't blatantly knocking anyone's style off.
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4 comments:
was always a fan of the first Nights Like These record, interesting to find there was a different version of it.
i miss premonitions of war, they were one of my favorites. any idea what happened to that band?
Thanks a lot! I'd heard of this version, but was never able to track it down. I like the rawness and the subtle differences, but the Victory version gets my vote just because it has Ghost Town Rituals.
Back in 06 and 07 I used to go to their shows. I loved the feedback intros and the raw unpolished sound of it everything about it was perfect. I remember hearing they got signed and I thought I knew that they were something else they werent like the other teenage bands playing. They had real music. But then I heard the album and I was like what the fuck is this? Because like you said all the raw effects were gone, there was no insane feedback at the beginning of each song. I didn't even listen to it. Later I talked to the guitarist and he told me how it went down. I hate record labels. Matt Qualls is one of the nicest coolest dudes I've ever met by the way.
I hope what you say is true that this is like The Only Clown I'm Down With Is Gacy because I cant find it online anymore and I've been dying to hear it again for nostalgia's sake.
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