review: One Starving Day--Broken Wings Lead Arms to the Sun

With an album title like Broken Wings Lead Arms to the Sun, one might expect One Starving Day to play the sappy brand of emo-tinged metalcore that’s inundated the heavy music scene over the past few years. Fortunately, they don’t. Though the music does owe something to melodic hardcore, the band plays a largely instrumental, low-key style of rock, augmented by violin and spacey, cosmic sounds. One Starving Day’s approach is occasionally aggressive (most often in the hardcore-styled, barked vocals), but usually just melancholic. Each opus (the record’s five tracks average almost 10 minutes in length) plods slowly along, layering keyboards and samples over one or two simplistic guitar riffs, while the drums march with an improvisational feel. This begins to grow monotonous after a while, as there aren’t quite enough ideas on hand to fill the 50-minute running time. Nevertheless, One Starving Day has created a different kind of album, one that will doubtless be the perfect soundtrack to someone’s rainy day.

One Starving Day
Broken Wings Lead Arms to the Sun
Planaria Inc.