Envy’s Sound Continues to Swell and Swoon on Eunoia

The tension between dreaminess and aggression, post-rock and hardcore, spoken word and abrasive vocals, are by now the hallmark of Envy – a sound that the band has nurtured over the decades since their first album in 1998. And Eunoia, the second album since the return of vocalist Tetsuya Fukagawa and a major shake up in the lineup in 2018, underscores the band’s unchanging vision of deeply cathartic screamo. It’s an obvious follow-up to their last album, The Fallen Crimson, complete with the intense peaks and troughs that Envy fans and genre aficionados would readily consume.

This is a blueprint that Envy’s clearly comfortable with, and the band’s dogged persistence in crystallizing this signature sound with every album is also what keeps their legions of fans enthralled. Thus it’s really no surprise that there are very few artistic shifts to be found in Eunoia, even if the album feels like, once again, one of their most polished offerings.

With “Piecemeal”, Euonia opens with an almost delicate murmur, an atmospheric track that could be mistaken for a Mono song if not for its brief length (just 1.5 minutes long) and Fukagawa’s spoken lyrics. This gradually transitions into “Imagination and Creation”, which builds on the initial reverie and swells into a thunderous vigor propelled by blistering drums. The third track, “The Night and the Void”, is an uplifting anthem, with twinkly guitar lines that accompany Fukagawa’s vocals till it’s raised into a lacerated howl. Then there’s “Beyond the Raindrops”, as it begins with a shimmery riff, and erupts into a seismic verse that reverberates with sheer optimism. So far, so Envy. While these songs are awe-inspiring in their beauty, they are largely familiar territory for the band.

But these songs have to give way to their more melancholic, post-hardcore roots eventually, and “Whiteout” hammers that in within its first few seconds. Harsh, discordant textures are broken up by mismatched time signatures here. Distorted chords are awash in cymbals, as they rapidly crash towards crescendos, followed by bars of quietude – easily the most stirring track in Eunoia so far. Yet, this bombast is tempered by the ominous “Lingering Light”, which is light on instrumentals other than dark synth notes and skittering hi-hats. The suspense is quickly eviscerated in “Lingering Echoes” with a rush of tense, guitar-driven passages. “January’s Dusk” then rounds up the album with an achingly radiant finale.

Envy’s brand of heartrending yet emotive songwriting has made them one of the stalwarts of screamo. With Eunoia, their sound is even more unflinching, cohesive and immaculately executed – perhaps even down to a science. None of the tracks overstayed their welcome, as the band precisely avoids the pitfalls of all-too-long post-rock compositions or overwrought emoting; they are, in other words, earnest without the cringe. But for those looking for a bit of variation, even the slightest hints of a metamorphosis in a band that has been around for at least three decades, your mileage may differ. Envy was a boundary-pushing outfit in the mid 2000s, and while they have yet to lose their potency, it’ll be intriguing to see how hard they can shove those boundaries again in their future records.

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Khee Hoon Chan is a freelance writer from Singapore, and writes for publications like Polygon, Edge Magazine and Bullet Points. Ask them about the weather at @crapstacular.