Envy - Eunoia - CD DIGIPAK

Having witnessed so much change over their 32 year career, Japanese post-hardcore legends ENVY have remained a steadfast and dominant force within the country’s boundary-pushing heavy scene and beyond.

With envy’s original roots in thrash-metal and screamo still word proudly on their sleeves, the band have steadily evolved their sound to incorporate euphoric elements of post-rock and shoegaze to spectacular effect. ‘Eunoia’, their 8th full-length release, is truly a landmark album; the perfect balance of aggression and elation that sees the band’s revitalised lineup exploring a latent sense of powerlessness in the face of a fractured and increasingly divisive world.

Six years ago in 2018, founding envy members Nobukata Kawai and Manabu Nakagawa were joined by new members yOshi, Yoshimitsu Taki and Hiroki Watanabe before the freshly bolstered five piece were reunited onstage in a surprise return of the band’s original frontman, Tetsuya Fukagawa. This meeting of creative minds, between hardcore’s esteemed old guard and the latest generation to emerge from Japan’s innovative post-hardcore community, has subsequently seen envy reprise the abrasive thrash of early releases such as 1998’s genre-defining ‘From Here to Eternity’ and their collaborations with acts including Thursday and Jesu before imbuing it with lived experience, dynamic patience and the eerie uncertainty of the contemporary.

As such, the band’s most recent release, 2020’s ‘The Fallen Crimson’ is an adrenaline rush of spoken word soliloquy; rich, reverberating guitar motifs and revitalised outburst of discordant post-hardcore fury. ‘Eunoia’, a word describing the mutual feeling of goodwill that exists between a speaker and their audience, takes this dichotomy of calm and chaos and distils it even further, showcasing the band truly in their element, both on stage and in the studio.

Consisting only of songs that the band can and will play on stage, the album was written around the idea of searching for hope and inspiration from day to day life whilst feeling powerless against the weight of the world. As such, the band expected their conscious use of minor keys and Tetsuya’s candid, diary-like lyrics to produce a despairing and remorseful record. However, whilst these emotions are keenly felt through ‘Eunoia’, the album as a whole is far from defeated with sharp shards of light, warmth and hope piercing the gloom, just as all feels lost.

A shining example, lead single ‘Beyond the Raindrops’ was one of the first songs written for the project but was only recorded at the 11th hour. The epic, halftime groove and soaring, wall-of-sound guitars are as melancholic as they are magnificent with Tetsu’s heartfelt lyrics written in the moment, in honest response to the song’s haunting melody.

Elsewhere, tracks like ‘Whiteout’ channel envy’s frenetic origins with a pummelling drum solo introducing staccato post-hardcore guitar work and vocals that oscillate wildly between guttural roar and a rush of spoken words. Written in under two hours, the abrupt about turn to a slow-burning shoegaze crescendo is testament not only to the ability of a band in their element but to the vast array of experience and influence that envy now call upon.

However, it is ‘Imagination and Creation’, the album’s de facto opening track, that rings in our ears the loudest. Described by Nobukata as “a step forward into the future, using the past as nourishment”; blast beat drums and shrieking guitars propel a defiant and contagiously hopeful vocal melody into the unknown as a band with such a storied past learn to cherish the now as a means of bracing themselves for whatever happens next.