Rowan Bruce
A decade and two full-length albums in, Snag have hit their stride on their crushing yet moving third album All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust. With acts like Touché Amoré, Pageninetynine and Envy underpinning their sound alongside tinges of classic Americana and math rock, Snag manage to eloquently balance their sonic onslaught with some incredibly tender moments of clarity.
Through their ‘Foam Cup’ series of tracks started almost a decade ago in 2017 and continued on their self-titled debut album in 2019 Snag have created an elegant throughline to track the evolution of their sound. On their third album’s ‘Foam Cup, Pt 3’, Snag take things in a heavy and tense direction with haphazard guitar stabs and constant shifts in tone, departing from the first part’s noise-rock roots and the second’s back-and-forth between delicate guitars and frenzied vocals and drums. Few bands make following their progress as efficient as Snag, allowing a new listener to get a sense of their sonic growth over a decade with three tracks.
Hitting their most punk and energetic on the track ‘Whisper’ Snag manage to leap between hardcore ferocity and emo tenderness without dropping their momentum. Guitarist and vocalist Samm Szymborski chases this minute and a half long track between aggressive hardcore energy and delicate American Football style cleans, covering more sonic ground in less than two minutes than most bands do in an entire album. While much of Snag’s output so far has leant into scrappy DIY sounds, ‘Whisper’ sets the trio up for an emotive and heartwrenching eleven track album.
While All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust feels far more professional and polished than their previous output, Snag still find time to return to their fierce skramz roots. Tracks such as ‘Shelf Life’ and lead single ‘Debilitated’ cram in plenty of chaotic, lo-fi hardcore riffs and punchy drum beats without sounding like they were recorded in a shoebox. Without losing any of their DIY charm Snag add a lot more clarity and depth to their emoviolence sound.
As the album begins to unfurl its wings, more and more sonic intricacies rear their heads. Although their sound has always embraced noise rock, Midwest emo and hardcore, All The Cages Holding Us… folds in brutal extreme metal inspired blast beats and screeched vocals on ‘Pray For Peace’ and a subtle slide guitar and a melodramatic brass section backing triumphant gang vocals on the track ‘Juneberry’. Despite typically staying stripped-back and lo-fi, Snag use their third album to expand their sound into varied and expansive new territory without losing any of their edge.
Blending their ferocious and passionate emoviolence sound with some more eccentric flourishes and clear, professional production, Snag manage to deliver one of the year’s most exciting emotional hardcore releases. Transforming from a staple of their local scene to a contender on a far wider scale, All The Cages Holding Us… marks an exciting new chapter for Snag.
All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust is out