CITING THEIR LOVE of the genre’s melancholic moods and epic emotions elicited by soaring guitars, pummelling drums and a complete absence of vocals, the as-yet unnamed local post-rock band spent several hours after last night’s rehearsal in the thusfar fruitless quest for the perfect moniker for their ensemble.
‘It seems like all the good names have been taken,’ mused bassist Jason Richards. ‘I mean, it’s not easy capturing the majesty of infinite space evoked by our triple-guitar assault, especially when it’s drenched in reverb and delay and building slowly to an earth-shattering crescendo, but we have to find a way in order to stand out from the crowd.’
Drummer Tim Jonson concurred, further expanding upon the dilemma facing his band. ‘It’s a real existential conundrum, you know?’ he said. ‘I mean, we completely eschew lyrics and vocals to make a point about the miserable failure of mere language to capture the essence of our transcendent paean to the numinous depths of space and time, yet here we are, ironically, stuck for a name made out of words.’
Locked in intensive discussion around the issue, other band members mentioned bands they admired that had somehow managed to resolve this seemingly insumountable challenge. ‘Well, of course there’s The Last Sighs of the Wind; Bones of a Dying World; First Came the Shadow; The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die; All That You Love Will Be Carried Away – those guys really nailed it,’ said second guitarist Adam Wright. ‘We too must find the perfect combination of words to refect the colossal grandeur, sadness and triumph of our music which is inspired by both our sense of utter insignificance in an utterly insignificant universe and our abject awe at the soul-crushing beauty of it all.’
Keyboardist Carl Evers insisted the perfect name for their band would be I Was Here For a Moment Then I Was Gone but was immediately silenced by his bandmates. ‘Jesus Carl, we’ve been through this before,’ said Richards. ‘You know that’s the name an album by [British post-rock band] Maybeshewill. Just fucking drop it OK?’
Despite Evers’ protests that there was a strong tradition of bands naming themselves after other bands’ album titles and songs, the rest of the group were adamant that their name had to be ‘100% original’ to capture their ‘totally unique’ sound which, according to their as-yet unreleased press release, ‘juxtaposes the eerie silence of deep space with the cataclysmic chaos of the cosmos’.
At the time of going to press, the band were visibly excited by the prospects of All That Is Revealed Is Banished Beyond the Desolate Emptiness of the Dying Void and Upon The Wings of Dark Hearts We Explode Into Abandoned Oceans after a Google search revealed the names had not yet been claimed. Third guitarist Alan Hancock was, not for the first time, threatened with being fired from the band for not taking the project seriously enough when he suggested they call the band As-Yet Unnamed Local Post-Rock Band.
