Saintly Rows is Blake Treviño, doing the vocals / playing guitar, Andy Domski on bass / backup vocals and Tristan Garwood on drums. Highly anticipated, Heaven in The Hollow is the follow up record of the bands amazing, second release “Everything That I Was Afraid of Happening, Happened“, which was published back in spring 2013.

The sound of the band refined since then. It’s a bit more aggressive and a lot more straight forward, allowing the listener less room to breathe, partly bringing back hints of old fashioned Emo played in the genre’s heydays. Those new songs are short and on the point, showing another side of Saintly Rows. Only two tracks exceed the border of three minutes. Even if their style changed a bit, the band from Albuquerque, New Mexico, still plays a superior blend of emo and screamo, sometimes mixed up with decent post-rock elements.

But, what does the songs on “Heaven In The Hollow” actually sound like?

Just like the ocean recedes right before the storm arises, Mara opens the album with a portentous, yet calm guitar riff, which perfectly accompanies the soft vocals of Tristan. But, slowly this sound overflows into a steady growing storm, whipped by angry screams and the sound of Treviño’s distorted guitar.

“If this is what you need, a life away from me, then I will be an ocean and slowly recede.”

While the second song, Bloom begins quite rough, keeping the dull pace of its forerunner, Jupiter Jazz Pt. II is pretty dynamic, changing the tempo from fast to slow and the other way around.

“You placed your hand in my own, said, “This must be hell because it feels like home.”

Ruin Value combines similar characteristics, keeping the momentum of Jupiter Jazz Pt. II, perfectly building the bridge to the proximate tracks.

The follow-up starts gently and pretty melodic. Just like the opening track, you could think that this might be the calm before the storm. But far from that: This time Saintly Rows keep things quiet. The style of the vocals is clean and pleasant, matching the lullaby-character of the song in a beautiful way. The Vine That Ate the South is definitely some kind of calm anchor for a stormy album, giving the listener some rest.

With Why Am I Still Plagued By You? the record gathers pace again, offering a twinkly guitar riff during the first half of the song, a mighty baseline and again, vocals in two parts.

The following songs, Luminarias and June, are characterized by the incredible moving drumming by Andy Domski, who is keeping the tempo high. Both songs go straight to your ear, inviting you to move your head to the rhythm.

The record culminates in the phenomenal Death and Memory, which starts slowly. The gentle sound is driven by a fair melody and the rhythmic drums. It floats ahead, till the voice of Tristan breaks the silence, filling the air with desperation. On top of this screamo hymn you get two parted vocals, alongside extraordinary good lyrics. You know, this gets me very time!

“When we are gone, not a voice disturbs the water or a breeze on a silent coast. I’ll wear this noose. I’ll bear this vice. I’ll carry this weight for the rest of my life. I want to be buried. I want to be forgotten.”

I'll Be Seeing You rounds off the LP in perfection. Just the opposite of how the album has started, the finale track begins fast and without any compromises, until the sound calms down, like a storm passing on. Thereby, it doesn’t matter, if Saintly Rows show their aggressive site or letting you drift away with their soothing melodies. The pondering lyrics are beautiful and utterly moving, just like on the other tracks, too. This is definitely another reason, why the album is able to convince in its entirety.

“If there’s a heaven in this hollow, don’t mourn the loss of flowers when Spring is soon to follow.”

Recorded live by Lee Sillery at Push Drive Studios, the first full-length of Saintly Rows is excellent in any thinkable way. No need to say, that you should better check the record out if you haven’t already. You’d definitely miss one of the greatest records of the year.

Most discographies start with a demo. Afterwards the bands usually release Eps, Splits with other bands and more Eps, slowly developing their sound. People get into their music, sometimes literally falling in love with it, but from time to time it happens that those bands split up. Always too soon, and frequently before they could release an entire album. OsoLuna, which features members of Tempano, La Tumba de Nicolas Cage and Hooverville, decided to take another path by releasing a full-length as their first musical output as a band. And hell, this stunning debut sounds like they are making music together, since... forever.

Every single track on OsoLuna’s selftitled record conflates into one another, together combined to a unique soundscape, somewhere between screamo and spacy post-rock, driven by the epic force of the interaction between vocals and energetically played instruments. The created atmosphere is dark and almost cinematic, perfectly matching the voices of Elsa and Emilio, which harmonize flawless, alternating between violent screams and gently, yet powerful clean vocals, sometimes devoted to a rousing chant.

Lyrically you can consider this record quite philosophical. It’s about respect towards other human beings, equally animals and sharing our planet as a common space to live. OsoLuna offers criticism upon nowadays individualistic society, in which everybody is closest to themself and helping one another is of low priority. In fact, this is the main subject of the lyrical content and that’s why this could be seen as a concept album.

Even if you listen to the s/t album on repeat, it never gets old, getting better with each run, while the 35 minutes playtime seem to fly by.

With their ambitious debut, the 4-piece from Torrelavega can easily align with acclaimed and established Spanish Screamo outfits. Since I fell in love with their unique sound at the first listen, I hope that, this LP was merely the start of a great discography. So please, stay forever and let us follow you on the path, you took with this LP!

¡Muchas gracias!

This epical masterpiece can be preordered through 13 different labels, including recently founded label krimskramz. You better act fast to get your hands on one of the 500 copies.

“Every breath they take is a conscious effort. And so they can end their life whenever life becomes too unbearable by not taking the next breath. And it's in that context I use the word suicide. She did that. She swam into my arms, looked me right in the eye, and took a breath... and didn't take another one."

In 10 month existence, we have met a lot of nice people from all around the globe through Form und Leere. One of the people we’ve met and made friends with lives in Massachusetts, America. You all probably know him. His name is Saetia-V-Neck-Dude and he was kind enough to answer a few silly questions.

Hello Saetia V-Neck Dude. How are things going?

S V-N-D: Hey guys, how did you get my e-mail? I am good, today. I have eaten some nice food (Brussel sprouts with pecan nuts and cranberries, for those of you who are interested in food) and I also went out for a walk, it was tiring but worth it ‘cause I got to take a nice walk. Also some obscure screamo band I posted on Tumblr got like 18 notes (7 reblogs!), so I guess I shouldn’t complain at all. I am a bit worried about the line-up of Bled Fest this year but not such a big deal ‘cause I think I won’t be able to go.

Haha, wondering who gave us your mail adresse? We just asked this north-korean boy who made you alive. Don’t worry we don’t share it with other folks. Could you please introduce yourself, for those who don’t know you?

S V-N-D: No I can’t right now sorry. Haha, just kidding… one of the best pranks. I am just an average guy from New England who was lucky enough to be famous thanks to some comics (that I don’t fully understand if I have to be utterly honest). I am 21 years old, no hobbies, no projects like band, fanzine and so on. Just kidding once again, hahaha. I have this band, but basically we rarely practice. I also started a solo project a while ago and soon I will finally record something that will hopefully be out on a split with Human Kitten, Crywank, and Frank Turner (I didn’t talk about it with any of them yet though but it’s on my list of things to do for March). I have started a fanzine but didn’t finish it yet (working on it from time to time…). I am also studying at the university and I spend a lot of time either at home with my records and internet or outside with my friends and internet. I am doing well.

Sounds you are really busy at the moment. Most important question first: Are you still together with this black-haired girl who is into Merchant Ships?

S V-N-D: Unfortunately not…

Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You were nice enough to bring her to Donauwörth, the hometown of June Paik, but it seemed she didn’t like it that much. Actually, it looked like she was pretty disappointed. Was this the reason you broke up?

S V-N-D: Well she was, but that was just the beginning. I don’t know... it all started like... I don’t really know guys. We went to Germany ‘cause I wanted to go to a festival in Berlin and she wanted to go to some big art thing in Kassel, but we only found out, that the festival was in May and the art thing was in 2017, so I tried to make a back-up plan in which we visited cities somehow connected to skramz such as Donauwoerth, Muenster, Rosswein, Erlangen, Rokycany, but she didn’t really have any interest in any of that. What happened is, that she left me alone somewhere in the North of Czech Republic and it all felt like that movie Eurotrip, which is one of my favorite movies and also one of the favorite movies of one of my main crushes, the girl who plays something in Pity Sex.

You have “Swaeg” tattooed on your right upper arm. I always wondered if you have any other tattoos. What about the girls? Do they like it?

S V-N-D: Hey, no, that’s my only tattoo. I am very scared of needles and truckers so I never really wanted tattoos. Except “Swaeg” of course. Girls usually love it and they are very interested in knowing the meaning behind it.

I totally feel you, dude.... You once had the plan to grow the population of girls in the skramz scene through one night stands. How did that work out so far?

S V-N-D: Oh well... it was not really a plan, it happened once and it went bad, there had been some misunderstandings and I am pretty sure it won’t ever happen again.

Ok, change of subject: Let’s talk about the music you love. You started a screamo band back in 2013. You guys released a Split with Coma Regalia, but since then, things got pretty quiet. Any plans for the future, maybe other bands you’d like to collaborate?

S V-N-D: To be honest my band is kinda crappy. After the split with Coma Regalia we started practicing very hard. You know “The Decline” by NOFX? I don’t, but our bass player loves it, well, it’s an 18 minutes song. Melodic hardcore (I think). We want to do something like this but with skramz, a twenty minutes song without post-rock moments. It’s pretty challenging. So far we wrote the first two minutes of it and we sound a bit like Capacities, I hope by 2018 we finish it and maybe record it and put it on a split with our favorite band ever: Light Bearer.

Common, everbody knows “The Decline”…! It seems like you guys have still a lot of work to do. So let’s speak about music in general. Winter slowly comes to an end. What will be your soundtrack for spring 2015?

S V-N-D: I am thinking mostly of Tigers Jaw, Jeromes Dream, Tiger Magic, Remek. And yours?

Aw, I don’t know. But, every time the sun comes out I feel some kind of urge, listening to Comadre. I also could imagine, listening to OsoLuna’s recently released selftitled LP, which is truly amazing. I also like the new record of Shizune. We’ll see. Name five artists/bands you don’t like and tell us why.

S V-N-D:

Cloud Rat: pretentious rockers, who think they got it easy just because they are a female fronted band.

No Omega: when they came to America we fought really hard about who had more privileges: Americans or Scandinavians.

Coma Regalia: they had a really bad behavior towards us when we released that split with them... some of them had even the guts to spit on my guitar.

Nai Harvest: pathetic British toothbrushes, who lack a bass players and humor.

Cerce: but just because they were the favorite band of my first girlfriend, and how I miss her every time I go to sleep, every time I kiss someone else, every time I listen to Seahaven, every time it’s a bit windy outside, not too much, enough to move the trees and play sweet tunes through the leaves.

Haha, alright. I hope they don’t feel offended.

Complete: Skramz is for…

S V-N-D: …the lucky unfortunate.

Let’s get poetic. Are you skramz because you’re sad or are you sad because of skramz? I know, you were thinking about this philosophical question for a long time. Did you already find the answer?

S V-N-D: I did. I would also like to say, those who introduced this question to the public were the humans at Driftwood Records. The answer is: sad because skramz. Sad because Skramz, arrogant because Brand New, dumb and shallow because Pop Punk, ignorant because Metal. The music we listen to influences our mood more than our mood influences our choices. It often ruins our mood, actually. We are here, because we were angry, we wanted to look beyond and we looked for an underground community, where we could feel at ease. We also wanted to be cooler than others, to look in the mirror and see someone with a defined personality and a rare, yet great taste. We are not here, because we were sad. If we were sad there would have been enough sad pop or folk to choose from. It’s up to us now not to swallow in depression and disappointment, but to find what songs make us wake up, what songs make us feel good, what records make us productive, what bands have a positive impact on our existences and what music can make sure that we leave a trace of us on this world without ruining it.

This should be a quote for eternity!! Ok, last question: How many Saetia V-necks do you own? Are these originals? Anything you’d like to add?

S V-N-D: I own two of them. One is a grey Saetia shirt, which I turned into a v-neck. The other is a normal grey v-neck shirt on which I wrote “Saetia”. I was asked to add that I am a fictional character and that I don’t represent the thought of the author of my comics (and neither of the person who uses my name on Facebook) and that all characters and facts and bands on this interview are entirely fictional. Listen to Verse En Coma.

Thanks for the interview. Take Care.

S V-N-D: When will it come out? Was this interview an excuse to have a normal talk with me? Are you a boy or a girl? If you’re a girl you think we could be able to flirt a bit later? I have a record player.