In 2003, a trio of teens in the suburbs of Seattle unleashed their debut self-titled album and immediately impressed the Pacific Northwest’s music scene with a furious and technically impressive thrashing that had gone missing since Sub Pop started signing sickeningly sweet pop acts like The Shins. Calling themselves The Fall of Troy, the band wasn’t screamo (though singer Thomas Erak did scream), it wasn’t math rock (though every note of their fast-moving guitar riffs were punctuated with an exclamation point) and it wasn’t hardcore (though it was both fast and loud) — Fall of Troy was something all its own. The band rose quickly, scoring tours with Deftones and Coheed and Cambria, but Fall of Troy’s members were also always fighting and threatening to disband (sometimes on-stage, even). After some personnel changes, the Fall of Troy’s bubble finally burst in 2010. But fans rejoiced when the band reunited in 2013, and in April the original three members released OK, their first full-length album since 2009’s In The Unlikely Event. Musically, OK is as brutal as fans could ever want, but the vapid lyrics make it easy to see why the band perhaps intended to be an instrumental act all along. “So spread your legs and count your blessings / I’ll be your 401K”? Really, dudes? Thankfully, instrumental versions of the album are available on Bandcamp. MEGAN SELING
The Fall of Troy w/68 & Illustrations
