Lion of the North/Mans - Split

Lion of the North and Mans are two emo/hardcore bands from Indiana. They represent the new style of emo-skram-hardcore that has been gaining a lot of popularity in the last year or so. This split is pretty fantastic, so I'll try and break it up by band.

I would say Lion of the North is a bit more accessible than Man's. They play a really fast, somewhat chaotic brand of emo that will appeal to hardcore kids and the emo nerds. Lion offers up 2 songs for this split, which is good, because I'm not sure a single song would hold it's weight against the Man's side of the split. Without sounding to down on this band, the songs are very structured and play out as pretty standard screamo songs. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic songs, and I would have loved to see this band live, I just think the songs would have really stood out with a bit more experimentation. Fans of Loma Prieta, Mihai Edrisch, etc. will dig this band.

The second side is really why I uploaded this split. Mans offers up one track, "Look At What You Did You Little Jerk", and it's become one of my favorite songs in this genre. The vocals are completely frantic, moving between shouts and high pitched screams. Lots of treble and squeally distorted guitars, held together with a grooving bass line and drum-line-esque snare rolls. I'm not too sure what the vocalist is saying in the opening parts of the song, but the lyrics in the final couple minutes of the song are surprisingly upbeat and positive. "Well we are not incomplete. We stand on two legs and won't bury our heads in the sand.....As long as we keep moving forward, we're alive! As long as we keep moving forward, we're alive!". It's in this part of the song that one of the bigger surprises comes....a horn solo (trumpet I think) laid over the screaming and bass. Cool! (PS. Huge props to whoever can name the reference in the song title. HA!)

Anyways, it's a solid offering by 2 bands that sadly broke up too soon. Lion of the North put out The Compass Calls EP and if you dig their songs on this split you'll definitely enjoy that EP. Man's put out a variety of splits and demo's, most of which I'm having trouble tracking down. They have 2 demo's up for download on their Myspace, but I was only able to snag one. It's pretty poor quality, but the songs are decent and the Slint cover is worth having. (I don't think the demo really holds it own against the track on this split though, which is unfortunate)
~AB

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LISTEN TO LION OF THE NORTH
LISTEN TO MANS