North Carolina's Blab School has one of the coolest band names in the world, and a sound to go along with it. There's a music descriptor trope that I hate, and that is the concept of "windows down on a summer day" sound. Blab School is 100% the antithesis of this sound and mindset. Play, "I Hate the Summer" and feel the bad vibes rise.
Blab School works in a certainty of heaviness without a tipping point. It stays on the shores of oceans full of red-eyed creatures and furious fangs, but who gets bit? And who just gets startled?
From the start, the darkness in the chord changes and the sickness in Ryan Seagrist's snarling delivery of lyrics, there's no room for a window to even be cracked. The smoke is staying inside. Elizabeth Killian shares lead vocal duties with a carelessness like screaming into a broken mirror and already having an answer you don't want to have to hear anyways.
The tumbling guitar lead of "Scrolls," or the absolute punishing of "Never Enough" keep a continual dirge of days that can't be differentiated from night. It's just all bleak and sounds amazing.
All the way through to the closer with the most appropriate title of this bummer-fest "(Don't Forget To) Give Up," Blab School leads in like a storm cloud and multiplies through the album into a crushing galaxy.
It's music to listen to when the sun devours space or vice versa.
