Hands Like Houses – Atmospherics
Let me take you all back to a specific point in time – the early 2010s. It was a simpler time, complete with a second Obama presidency, “Gangnam Style,” Kony 2012, YouTube being more than just Mr. Beast clones, and I was starting to get into other kinds of music, at least outside of metalcore and post-hardcore. By the early 2010s, I was wanting to branch out my taste in music, but all throughout high school, I just listened to whatever was popular in Alternative Press Magazine, at least back when they were a relevant publication. I specifically remember getting into a couple of bands before I moved more into indie and alternative rock. Those two bands were At The Skylines and Hands Like Houses. Both of those bands dropped their debut albums in 2012, but only one band is still around today (it’s clear which one it is, unless you didn’t read the title of the review), yet it’s not the same as it was back in 2012. This Australian act is one of the first bands I found in the style of post-hardcore / metalcore that introduced pop-ish vocals to the mix. At The Skylines did, too, although they were also a more generic band. HLH had a bit of a progressive sound, too, and they really stuck out from the pack. I was an insanely huge fan of them, and they were one of the few bands in that style that I still listened to. I went through a period for a few years where I didn’t even listen to much metalcore, hardcore, or any heavier music, because I was burnt out on it.
Hands Like Houses was a band that I always kept in touch with, even as they kept releasing music, but a couple of shifts happened in the last decade – the band changed their sound, moving away from post-hardcore to a hard-rock-ish sound in 2018, and then to a pop-rock / alternative sound in 2020, but longtime vocalist Trenton Woodley left the band a couple of years ago. He basically cited creative differences, which I could understand clearly after the band dropped some new stuff with their new vocalist (a guy that I don’t care to remember his name, because he’s literally every hard-rock / Octanecore vocalist in existence) in 2023. They periodically dropped a set of four EPs throughout 2023 and 2024, which eventually coalesced into their new album, Atmospherics. Each EP was named for a part of the atmosphere, and that’s a cool idea, but it’s a shame that these songs are some of the blandest hard-rock you’ll ever hear. Their new vocalist isn’t inherently bad, because he has a good voice, but Woodley was one of the kind. There was nobody like him in the post-hardcore scene, and he truly was one of the best vocalists of that time. This new guy, well, isn’t that, and it doesn’t help that the band devolved into a generic Octanecore band. I just talked about how bland this type of stuff is when I reviewed the new Until I Wake album, but this sounds just like that. Each song sounds like the last one, and not in a way that I particularly like, because the hooks just aren’t there.
There are some guest spots here that are kind of odd, like Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie is here, and that’s cool, but Kellin Quinn randomly shows up on a song for some reason, and it’s not like either of them do anything that interesting. They’re oddly wasted, but even then, Hands Like Houses is not the hot commodity the were a decade ago. Now if those two guys were on album from 2015, or something like that, that’d be a huge deal. Having them on this album feels like Gillespie and Quinn were throwing them a bone, or at least trying to throw them some relevance. Atmospherics is one of those albums that isn’t technically bad, and it’s easily listenable, but it’s a slap in the face to everything they did beforehand. This is such a disappointment, because the band already had some cool albums under their belt. There are admittedly a few songs with solid hooks, but every time I listen to those, I just wish Trenton was singing them. He would do a much better job here than this guy. Again, he isn’t bad, per se, but he has no personality in his voice. He just sounds like every other Octanecore vocalist in this space, and their sound does him no favors, because that’s partially why he sounds like that. Their sound has turned into something so devoid of personality, it’s hard to believe this is the same band that put out a couple of top notch albums in the early 2010s.
Even if you took out the fact that Trenton Woodley, this album is just another Octanecore album. There is nothing special, unique, or interesting about this album. It exists, and you can listen to it, but that’s about it. I don’t even have a lot to say about the album itself, because there isn’t much to say. This is a bland, uninspired, boring, and forgettable and boring Ocanecore that is nothing you haven’t heard before. Their new vocalist isn’t all that interesting, either, but he isn’t given anything interesting to work with, so how much of the blame can you really give him? I don’t know if this album will go down as one of the worst of the year, but it’ll be one of my worst of list, regardless. I think it’s just automatically not a good album because this band has done better. It’s such a step down, it honestly kind of hurts. This band had a lot more potential, so I’m bummed out that this record turned out the way it did.
