ASPHYXIUM ZINE

Monday, June 4, 2018

Lyric Video Review: SHALLOWPOINT Haze by Dave Wolff

Haze (Official lyric video)
From their 2013 full length Infringement
Place of origin: Lenoir City, Tennessee, USA
Genre: Rock/nu-metal
Produced by Heather Shallowpoint for Shallowpoint Productions
Release date: January 24, 2018
Their latest album is four years old, and it’s been a while since I wrote about them, but it’s good to see Shallowpoint still plugging away and making a name for themselves. They are among the most covered bands in Autoeroticasphyxium zine, and among the first bands I contacted after discovering the Tennessee rock and metal underground. I have social media to thank for this; if not for Myspace and Youtube and Facebook I may not have come across so many musicians from that part of the world so quickly. There is still a lot that’s happening in Tennessee, and Shallowpoint is still part of it. Most nu-metal I don’t find much inspired, but this band has always given it more feeling than usual. Going by their recent string of live performances, people are still responding to their heaviness, depth, drive and honesty. In 2018 they released two lyric videos to promote Infringement; besides selling the full length on Bandcamp and working on new material they have new live videos on Youtube, filmed at local Knoxville, Tennessee clubs International and Open Chord. For an independently made promotional video the graphics and text crawls are displayed with top notch professionalism, just as good as the sound quality. As with their promotional videos, the band produced this clip with their own resources, substantiating the notion that expensive graphic companies are not a necessity for struggling bands. The animations of the entire world burning in a monstrous lake of hellfire fit the lyrics as they crawl across the screen. The lyrics themselves are all the more profound when read along with the song, being a painfully outright presentment of deeply downhearted internal emptiness. This is plausible right from the beginning; the sense of loss and longing is quite real, depicting a search for the light at the tunnel’s end without the knowledge of what waits at this journey’s end. It’s the kind of lyric that many feel but lack the daring to even acknowledge. This should hit home with a great many listeners and should prove to be a cathartic experience before the song ends. -Dave Wolff

Band lineup:
Chuck Shallowpoint: Vocals, Guitar
Heather Shallowpoint: Bass
Heath Devine: Guitar
Jason Drake: Drums

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