Band: Native Construct Album: Quiet World (2015) Song: Come Hell or High Water. One of my top10 new bands, worth listening, over and over again. \m/, ------ ...
I recently came across the band Native Construct in a mix of songs on spotify and it immediately caught my attention. This song, Come Hell or High Water, is my favorite from the band’s only album so far, Quiet World.
Native Construct sounds very much like a mixture of Between the Buried and Me, Queen, and Dream Theater. The whole album is very theatrical. It is a concept album based around a mute (the title of the first track on the album) who is in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back. He retreats into/creates a world in his head where everyone else shares his condition and he still strives after the girl’s affection.
Come Hell or High Water opens with a variation of a theme that appears elsewhere in the album (the breakdown in Your Familiar Face, for example). One element that stuck out to me when listening to this song, although other songs on the album do the same, is the use of 3/4 time. I have not found many prog/metal songs that seriously utilize 3 beats per measure. The artists explore the rhythm’s versatility throughout the song. The beginning vocals sound light and almost waltz-like, but the violin carries a more sinister melody behind the vocals. The song builds up to an epic section starting around 1:48. Still in 3 and impossible not to headbang to! My favorite section of the song, however, happens at 2:35. The syncopation of the guitar, the drums’ steady, but accented rhythms and the vocals sometimes following the guitar and sometimes not is incredible.