Eleven Minutes Away – Arson Followed Me Home (CD)

Eleven Minutes Away’s opening to “Arson Followed Me Home” is interesting, as it uses tried and true metal riffs (through the medium of emo) to create a compelling post-hardcore track that is fueled most by its vocals. Throughout the tracks on “Arsons Followed Me Home”, an energy flitters through that makes for a feeling that one cannot shake. Even in tracks that start out without much in the way of energy, such as “Purpose is Distraction”, the brooding nature of the track belies any sluggishness espoused by the instrumentation on the disc. The sister to “Purpose is Distraction” is the follow-up track “Shall I Happily”. Where both are heavily inculcated with this slower instrumentation, it is “Shall I Happily” that attacks this rapidly-dominant paradigm and puts forth a guitar/drums interplay that any pit-worthy punk band would be proud. In fact, the hopped-up guitars on “Shall I Happily” seem akin to Brand New’s “Guernica”, especially in the larger context that provides such a contrast between light and dark. “Atrophy Acetylene” is probably one of the better tracks for Eleven Minutes Away to place as their lead-off track, if not only for the fact that it will be most likely the few tracks that every single person that picks up the disc will listen to.

Immediately placing “I’m A Doctor, Not A Dooorstop” after “Atrophy Acetylene” continues a cognoscent set of decisions by the band to maximize their general sound in the earliest stage of the disc, as both of the first two tracks are probably as different as any on the disc. Deep Elm has progressed in the style of music that they have put out in the last half-decade, as Eleven Minutes Away is the vanguard of the new-emo style, something that one just wouldn’t hear on Deep Elm in 1998 or 1999. This shows two things: first off, Eleven Minutes Away is impressive enough in playing a style that is overrun by rich kids with the best equipment that a major label like Deep Elm could find them, and Deep Elm is current enough to move away from some of the chaff that marked the labels earlier disc – Logh and Lewis come to mind and sign some impressive acts. Eleven Minutes Away is just that – eleven minutes away from hitting it big, and their work on “Arson Followed Me Home” indicates that there is a mature and impressive band making emo into a musician’s, instead of a hairstylist’s genre.

Top Tracks: Danger, Inc , Atrophy Acetylene

Rating: 7.0/10

Eleven Minutes Away – Arson Followed Me Home / 2005 Deep Elm / 12 Tracks / http://www.11minutesaway.com / http://www.deepelm.com / Reviewed 08 March 2005