In less than a week, Albany hardcore band Downswing will release its second full-length album, and hopes it will be a game-changer.
“And Everything Was Dark” is the first LP the four-piece melodic hardcore outfit has recorded for the MNRK label, a union that has helped their singles get airtime on satellite radio and map out a fall/winter national tour.
If You Go
Downswing “And Everything Was Dark” album listening party
When: Sunday at 4 p.m.
Where: Empire Underground, 93 N. Pearl St., Albany
Tickets: Free
More info: @downswingstyle on Facebook and Instagram
On Sunday, Downswing is hosting an advance album listening party for “And Everything Was Dark” at Empire Underground in Albany. The free event will feature a three-song acoustic set – the first time Downswing has ever performed live acoustically – a Q&A session, photo ops and special giveaways for fans who preorder the vinyl edition of the record.
Guitarist Anthony Salvaggio, who co-founded Downswing in 2017, is looking forward to the Empire Underground event and for fans to hear the group’s sonic progression.
“Sonically, we derived from a more hardcore/old-school punk,” he said. “Now we’ve leaned into something more digestible – mainstream metalcore (sounding). The songs are more melody-based, based around singing parts. We’re still a heavy, aggressive band and hopefully more dynamic.”
Salvaggio attributes the band’s changing aesthetic to two things: vocalist (and former second guitarist in Downswing) Harrison Seanor becoming the new lead singer in 2020, and a conscious choice to look beyond genre constraints.
He found that moving away from “our original influence of screaming with some singing” to more melodic fare better reflected the band’s personnel, while also making it easier to grow its audience.
“Marketability is cool, but we’re still writing what we want to write,” Salvaggio said. “It feels cool, authentic to us. Especially with the vocal switch; Harrison’s been singing his whole life. It made it plausible to do this at a high level.”
“Bringing him in evolved our songwriting process,” he continued. “Our development feels good, and we’re at a point in time where we can please old fans while making ourselves happy.”
Downswing began work on “And Everything Was Dark” toward the tail end of 2023. The guys got together or emailed each other song ideas once or twice a week and slowly hashed out the new material. By the time they went to Nashville this past April to record the record, Salvaggio “felt like the songs were 75-80% there.”
Feedback from friends in the Albany scene and beyond helped them further hone the sound of the album. The final step in pulling “And Everything Was Dark” together was Jonathan Dolese, a star producer in the hardcore/metalcore subgenres.
His input offered up “a lot of ideas we might not have thought of” and helped Downswing generate a successful single. “For What it’s Worth,” featuring vocal contributions from Travis Moseley of Colorblind, ended up being heard by one of the DJs on Sirius XM satellite radio’s popular metal/heavy alternative station, Octane. The DJ dug it, and for the past month, “For What it’s Worth” has been part of Octane’s daily rotation.
Getting airplay was the fulfillment of a “long-term” goal for Downswing, but Salvaggio hopes it’s just the start of something big. He and his chums have a lot riding on “And Everything Was Dark,” seeing it as a crucial part of expanding the group’s potential and national reach.
“We want to take it as far as we can, and who knows how far that is,” he said. “A lot of it depends on how well the record does. We’d love to get to a point where we can tour six, eight months of the year. We can’t do that now; it gets rocky trying to do more than a month, because of jobs and life. It’s not about making a lot of money, we would just love for it to at least be sustainable, and hopefully the record pushes enough people toward hearing us that it becomes possible.”
But before Downswing sees what the future has in store, there’s the listening party on Sunday. Salvaggio notes that the band has “never really done anything like this” before. He’s particularly enthusiastic about the acoustic mini-set. Learning the new songs in that format has tested his playing abilities while also making for a unique listening experience.
“I honestly don’t pick up my acoustic much, maybe seven or eight times a year,” he said. “It’s humbling in a way, but it feels good. It keeps it fun; it’s good for the musicianship aspects and testing my limits.”
“It’s also a different take on the songs; I was there for the writing process, and now it’s like I’ve learned a totally alternate version of the songs,” Salvaggio added. “If you could show the original and acoustic versions back to back, most people, unless you listen closely to the lyrics, wouldn’t know they’re the same songs.”
This article originally published at Albany’s Downswing brings hardcore home for album release party.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
