CrazyEightyEight Drop Not One, But Two New Songs From Debut Album

2 December 2018 | 1:02 pm | Alex Sievers
Originally Appeared In

CrazyEightyEight drop two new cuts in the lead up to their debut album, 'Burning Alive'. 

CrazyEightyEight drop two new cuts ahead of their debut LP.

PCJessie Lau Photography



After a successful crowd-funding campaign, and after going all in on writing and recording behind closed doors for the last few months, CrazyEight Eight are now mere weeks away from releasing their debut album on December 14th. Titled 'Burning Alive', the trio of guitarist/songwriter Jarrod Alonge, bassist Patty Walters (As It Is frontman) and vocalist Lauren Babic already put out the Underoath-sounding 'Shinebox' earlier in the year, but now their armed with two new cuts - 'Tears In Rain' and 'Nitroglycerin'. So let's chat about 'em both!

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First up, 'Tears In Rain'. As for the name, any fan of Ridley Scott's 1982 neo-noir sci-fi film, Blade Runner, will have caught on almost instantly here. As the title is a quote of the iconic final monologue from antagonist Roy Batty: "all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain". And little lyric lines like "Disposable machine" and "Unconscious memories redefined" gives this song's fatalistic, human-or-machine inspiration even more credence. If a band like Ice Nine Kills can base their entire new album off horror and slasher flicks, than these guys and gal are free to do so too with their own favourite films. And they do it well!

As for the song itself, it's a far more melodically driven, spacious track than the super-charged post-hardcore that we normally get from CrazyEightyEight - coming complete with a wondrous gang vocal section in the bridge - but it is never weaker because of this. In fact, 'Tears In Rain' is one damned polished product, perhaps a result of the group working closely with their good friend, engineer and producer Johnny Franck, before having Will Putney lend his mixing and mastering know-how over the top. Also, as a quick side note, I'm so glad the band have kept on drummer Tyson Dang - the dude fits their style and dynamic superbly.

As for it's counter-part single, 'Nitroglycerin', this is really where we receive the heavier, faster metalcore side of the band. Starting from a brooding, gritty bass line from Patty, the track erupts into jagged, off-kilter riffs and Lauren's powerful screamed vocal delivery where she slips in and out between her melodic and heavy styles on the fly. It's pretty solid, all up. Although, I've seen some comments online about how this track, in particular, is just "Female Beartooth", to which I have one response to offer. Beartooth fucking wishes they could make music like this; something infinitely better than the mediocre-as-hell 'Disease', at the very least.

Regarding the track's theme and movie inspiration, this is clearly a Fight Club homage. Because it's all in the words used. Lyrics such as "This is your life/The clock ticks" and "You met me at a pivotal time" more or less mirror Tyler Durden's own dialogue; "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time", as well as "You met me at a very strange time in my life" respectively. Another telling clue is the materials that Tyler and his Project Mayhem cohorts use to bring down the central credit banks in the climax of David Fincher's 1999 screen adaption are - you guessed it - nitroglycerin.

Also, the lines "the middle children of history" and "Our Great War’s a spiritual war/our Great Depression is our lives" are taken verbatim from the film and Chuck Palahniuk's original 1996 book. I've also seen a couple people think that that "great depression" tag in the intro is a reference to the latest As It Is album (which I'm sure it is too), but it's more so from the source material. Either way, it's a fiery, soul-searching song to represent the wayward and self-destructive nature of the fight club ideology itself, just minus all of the male violence and anti-debt stance.