A little over a year after the release of their self-titled album, Botfly have released a remastered compilation of their earlier works, titled Dark Days. Comprised of 18 tracks, the album progresses from oldest to most recent and takes listeners along on the band’s journey.
Literally compiling all of the tracks they released before their self-titled in order from oldest to most recent, Dark Days Starts on their 2013 single release, “Lunacy,” and ends on their 2014 two-track release, Denouement. Botfly have painted a picture for their fans of their progression as a band over the four years following their first recording release.
“The new album is actually remastered versions of all our releases before the self titled full length came out. So really it was a way for us to show our new audiences where we came from. It was a way to show our progression to our current sound,” says guitarist and vocalist Keegan Goodspeed.
The album can almost be broken up into three sections, showing the stages leading up to the band’s current sound, with the album’s two distinct lulls, “Days Late” and “Disentomb,” acting as the barriers.
Tracks 1-5 kick the compilation off with a fast pace and enough distortion and noise to wake up even the sleepiest among us. Resting heavily on a deep, sludgy sound with a hardcore accent, these tracks are loud, they’re heavy and they’re in your face.
Tracks 7-10 take a direction that seems to rely more heavily on melody and showcasing the more technical and intricate aspects of the band’s sound. This is perfectly exemplified in the indistinct and quiet speech underneath a layer of drumming and light squealing sounds in “Nobody Lives Forever.” The band let the track periodically get quiet enough for listeners to really slow down and pick up on those softer sounds.
Finally, tracks 12-18, pick back up slowly with a sound that is unmistakably sludgy and often brings the riff to the forefront The band also continue to utilize moments of quiet among their noise. But the final track, “Homesick,” is undoubtedly one of the loudest, pulling listeners back out of any sort of mellow atmosphere they may have found earlier. In these tracks, the band also show a certain level of quirk that manages to fit the Maritime alternative scene to a T.
In addition to the maintained sludgy sound, a secondary common thread for the band’s tracks is Goodspeed’s highly emotive and raw vocals.
“If I don’t have any actual connection to what I’m singing, then it feels fake and I can’t get behind it. So it kind of forces me to have to write very honestly and openly about my personal life. Feeling like I might let people down, or be a disappointment to people has always been an overbearing emotion I don’t deal with well, which makes me very self conscious about myself and how people may perceive me. So I end up writing a lot about that. That and death that happens around me and other overbearing life events,” says Goodspeed.
Emotions of desperation, frustration, regret and anxiety shine through in both the lyrics and the instrumentals, but with a slow, throbbing beat that lets you know they’re the type of emotions that pull you under and hold you down. All of this, however, is wrapped up in a pleasant package—for those of us who like being slapped in the face a few times while absorbing music. It pulls you out of your comfort zone, but in a good way.
Botfly’s music puts you in different shoes while you’re taking it in. It’s an adventure you can take while you listen, but doesn’t drag you down with it.
A couple of standout tracks for the album include “Little Man Syndrome” and “Nobody Lives Forever” for their unique and distinct sludge-metal feel and their dynamism throughout.
In terms of how it compares to their self-titled, it feels as though they have progressed over time into a more defined and original sound. Incorporating more and more stillness, riff-orientation and heavy emotion into their tracks as they go, the result is a sound that incorporates more melody and stillness, but still stays heavy enough to keep fans on the edge of their seat.
Botfly have evidently solidified and settled nicely into their sound. They know who they are and they continue to charge onward, fine-tuning the details along the way. Though they’re hard to place squarely in any one category, their sound falls somewhere in the middle of the sludge-metal quirk of bands like Acid Bath, the deep and heavy doom-metal drone of bands like Electric Wizard and even at times the sharp, riff-heavy style of more contemporary post-hardcore or alternative-rock bands like Billy Talent.
Currently touring through Ontario, Botfly will be back on the East Coast with a show at Moncton’s Plan B Lounge on November 25th and in Halifax at the end of December. Until then, their CD can be purchased online through Pink Lemonade Records HERE.