Album Review: Pierce The Veil - 'The Jaws of Life'
It’s time to tear the case open and save lives, and pop-punk royalty Pierce The Veil are ready with The Jaws of Life.
Just over a decade from their fascinating full-length Collide With The Sky, it may be easy to overlook any new tunes the San Diego collective bring out but this is not one to dismiss so easily. First teasing the record with lead single ‘Pass The Nirvana’, it was as if time had not passed by so quickly and the world is young and emo again. Everyone grows and becomes improved versions of who they once were, and this also applies to their music idols and the content presented before them.
Kicking the album off is ‘Death of an Executioner’, a track with a smooth opening moving into a killer chorus with a catchy sound. It’s a beat that one does not dance to, but moshes to with ease and chill. Frontman Vic Fuentes dares not to compromise on bringing the depth and emotion into every word, in a way only his diversely toned voice can. High and low, loud and quiet, but never holding back. All out. Everything out.
Also within the album is one of the newer singles, ‘Emergency Contact’. A song that rides the punk nostalgia wave, but does not rely on that trick alone. “Push me, pull me”, Fuentes sings in this ode to mismatched love. With wanting the answer and understanding of a will-we-won’t-we romance, it’s one of the more relatable cuts as it’s a conflict everyone will experience at every stage of life. Maybe through being too immature to understand the concept of love; maybe through trauma and past pain stopping someone from being committed; there are a plethora of leads to this point but no matter how someone gets there, they now have an anthem to get out that frustration of just wanting to know. Will that person be there or will they not be? Do they want love, or do they want to be alone?
If there is something about alternative music, it’s that it will ask the same questions the listeners do and even if both parties never get answers, it’s always nice to know no one is ever on their own.
The record breaks up with the 22-second interlude titled ‘Irrational Fears’, which imitates the safety speech heard upon boarding an airplane. A muffled voice which captures an all-too-real definition of the title, it then moves quickly into ‘Shared Trauma’: one of the softest songs on the listing. There is a black sheep of a track on every album and this is it - but that is never a bad thing.
‘Shared Trauma’ takes a more lo-fi tone for the first half of the track with an auto-tuned Fuentes leading the lyrics alongside the beats. Tones pick up within the second half and run with the layered vocals, relaxing the mind while discussing sharing pain and panics. Trauma bonding is a real unhealthy form of bonding within human relationships, and the instrumental use represents how this can feel mentally: one moment is peace and unity, the next moment is dark and gloomy.
Winding down the album with ‘12 Fractures’, a stunning acoustic performance, it brings everyone back to reality as the ear is drawn only to Fuentes and the guitar accompanying him throughout the entirety of the recording. It brings it back to its basics, to what music is; feeling, saying, and uniting everyone who is the same and different. That is the beauty of alternative music.
The Jaws of Life still flows that Pierce The Veil magic that enchanted everyone years before, and it’s a testament of what can happen when a band stays true and loyal to what they want and what they care about in their art. Honesty, love, support; this is found in every chord played on every song, and that will always be the key ingredient list for this California group.
When there is a car crash in life, always use The Jaws of Life.
Words by Jo Cosgrove
