#earthandsky

[the-art-alchemist]

[sameerspiritual]

She is balanced between earth and sky, Between the strength that grounds and the flexibility that frees. Her pointe shoes plant seeds of possibility, While her arched spine reaches for dimensions beyond sight.

[tomhoppusdelonge]

[numbtotherhythm]

Of Mice & Men • EARTHANDSKY

My Colored Vinyl • #28

[thegreatthendowski]

I really like.. I have so much to say about of mice & men’s new album. and I don’t have friends so i’m just going to talk about it here and hope someone knows what i’m talking about. I haven’t even looked into the lyrics too much yet but man today I was at school in the library just sitting down to check my assignments and emails and such and so it’s the perfect time for me to listen to an album bc 1. I have good wifi there and 2. I have the time to just sit down and really listen to an album. and idk if i can put it all into words like... this band has been my favorite since I was 13. i’m 20 now. I have a freaking tattoo of an ampersand because of them. and when defy came out I was a little disappointed. It didn’t feel the same at all without austin. I felt like defy was lacking passion and originality. to me it felt a bit forced. and I just didn’t really connect with it the way I have with all of their other albums. I listened to it a few times honestly and then that was it. and when I heard the first few releases from earthandsky I was disappointed. I still felt like it was lacking something. something was off. I just wasn’t feeling it. and then the album came out. and I think I kind of put it on shuffle and I didn’t really listen to it. and I think part of me already didn’t have the highest hopes. but today I sat down and put my headphones in and really listened to the album from start to finish. and I am just so blown away. I feel the emotion and passion and care put into this album. It moved me again and i’m emotional about it because it’s actually reminding me of the flood album which is the first album I ever listened to by them and it is still my favorite and an album that I feel I can always go back to no matter how many years go by. so to listen to earthandsky now and hear those similar melodies and guitar riffs again and feel so moved by this album it’s making me tear up. I just don’t know how to express truly how much it means to me to hear this album and feel an emotional connection to it the way I did with every album besides defy. It’s been 3 years since I got this feeling. before restoring force came out I had a countdown for it on my phone for months. I listened to that album probably every single day at least once a day for months. idk. music has always been a huge part of my life and this band has definitely had the biggest impact on me. I have never gotten sick of their music. so it is a really special feeling to really feel connected to their new music again now after austin left and after 3 years of not really having that feeling and not feeling it with defy. In a way it just takes me back to when I was 13 listening to the flood and how much I love the sound of that album. also I think the mountain may be my favorite song on this album so far. and maybe gravedancer as a close second.

[eddable]

Absolute scorcher of a jam from OM&M's new album EARTHANDSKY

[happymetalgirl]

Of Mice & Men - EARTHANDSKY

It was just last year when Of Mice & Men released their resilient fifth album, Defy, in the aftermath of former vocalist Austin Carlile's departure from the band due to the agonizing afflictions of his Marfan syndrome. The band showed how much their music helped them all make it through the trying time of letting their bandmate go on such unfair terms, and bassist Aaron Pauley paid Carlile great respect from the spot at the microphone he left behind. The band have returned with another studio album with Pauley handling all the leading vocal duties and really put not just their metalcore muscles on display here, but their dexterity and ingenuity as well.

EARTHANDSKY is an album all about the balance between old and new that has been at the heart of modern melodic metalcore since its inception, and the album follows an interesting trajectory that starts with a more intense focus on the band’s and metalcore’s foundations in hardcore, taking them to heavy extremes while offering the taste of clean melody that would later characterize the genre’s second wave (which the album later moves into paying homage). The trajectory the album follows isn’t cut and dry and too obvious; there are still notably Killswitch-inspired moments early on among the Converged-influenced stuff. But it’s these first four songs that the band sound the most impassioned on that kick the album off on probably the best, seriously impressive, four-song streak of any Of Mice & Men project. “Gravedancer” bursts out of the gate with a djenty "Blackened"-type hardcore riff to back its snarling vocal aggression and a slow, tasty, angular breakdown with this warbling tremolo picking guitar that adds an element of unrest and novelty to the classic metalcore trope. “As We Suffocate” takes cues from early second-wave acts while it incorporates clean vocal melody, but something about the vibrant attitude of these first few old-school-influenced tracks directs the vocal melodies to being more inspiring and soaring than the average good-cop metalcore chorus, and this track’s and the next track’s are particularly compelling. Amidst the thrashy verses and the hardcore-as-fuck breakdown, the inspiring vocal melody of “Taste of Regret” is a pristine example of exactly what alternative-tinged metalcore can be at its best; the song is a fucking banger, and the chorus is cathartic as fuck. On the song “Mushroom Cloud” Pauley delivers nu metal-flavored bass-slapping and tormentedly screamed vocal delivery that remind me of Cane Hill, with the band exploding into ferocious double-bass madness before the absolutely slamming breakdown.

Around here, the album enters its middle section of leaning more heavily on the influence of bands like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying who helped jumpstart the second wave of metalcore with the smooth clean choruses and thrashy/groovy verses. The soaring alternative metal chorus of the song “Pieces” helps transition into this part of the album, where the song “Deceiver/Deceived” features this clean vocal passage during the groovy, mid-tempo verses that just feels a little mismatched, but perhaps intentionally representative of late 2000′s metalcore. The song “Earth & Sky” features verses with old-school metalcore screams and melodic guitar playing distinctly influence by the the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene that also influenced the second wave very heavily, while the choruses come with the more inspiring side of alternative metal. It’s all a bit repetitive at this point on the album, but the crushing breakdown that finishes the song after an tension-building ambient section is a breath for fresh air as the album starts to fatigue. And speaking of that, the third section.

“The Mountain” is about where the band start to sound creatively tired on the album, with the soaring chorus melody not feeling quite as special and the breakdown feeling kind of predictable and too run-of-the-mill, but its the following two tracks, “Meltdown” and “Linger”, that just dive deep into more purely alt metal styling, with the jocky alt rock riff and the cliché vocal melody on “Meltdown” just feeling so unnecessarily far to this side of the spectrum the band seems so keen to traverse, and with “Linger” just offering more of the same problem in a different package.

The album ends on the relatively high note of “How to Survive”, which, although also kind of compositionally tired, is at least a return to more of the vibrant attitude and thrashy energy that kicked the album off on such a great start.

While the album does wear thin in creativity and taste about two thirds of the way through, the more notable majority of EARTHANDSKY finds Of Mice & Men taking a surprising leap up from even the relatively strong defiance of last year’s Defy; where this burst of creativity and inspiration came from so soon, I have no idea, but it's the less important matter at hand. What matters is that this band really came into a fine form for themselves while they dipped into more metallic hardcore and old-school metalcore while still reinforcing it with truly impassioned clean sections that enhance rather than just contrast the heavier side of their music, and I hope they can carry this forward.

homage+elaboration>nostalgia/10

[handsofspirit]

Sky, Earth and rainbows 🌈 in-between🌟 I have a meeting this morning at a wildlife refuge so I thought I would bring one of our Lemurian Spheres with me! We are finally seeing the sun for the first time in about 5 days. As you can see, it is the start to a stunning long weekending. 🎉 For more info on the sphere, shoot us a DM🌸 - - - #lemurian #lemurianquartz #lemurianseed #lemurianseedcrystals #quartz #clearquartz #crystalball #crystalsphere #crystalhealing #crystalspheres #rainbow #rainbowcrystals #rainbowcrystal #earthandsky #reflect #mountains #snowcap #blueskys #crystalcommunity #crystalart #crystalline #healingtools #auraglow #crownchakra #healingstones #healingcrystals #yogainspiration #yogalove #handsofspirit https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx2bHN7H5vW/?igshid=1uucvrp17ht7s