Band:	Collapse Under The Empire
Album:	Shoulders & Giants
Style:	Post rock
Release date:	2011
A review by:	wormdrink414

01. Shoulders
02. Giants
03. There's No sky
04. The Last Reminder
05. The Sky Is The Limit
06. Disclosure
07. After The Thaw
08. Days Of Freezing
09. Incident
10. A Riot Of Emotion

Collapse Under The Empire is an instrumental post-rock group that incorporates subtle aspects of electronica into their music. The result is sometimes eerie and sometimes unsettling but, for the most part, is pretty; songs on this seem like they were built for those days when all you want to do is follow a flock of birds through a field toward some mountains by yourself. It is, above all else, a dreamy, relaxing listen.

Nevertheless, this is post; amidst all of the beauty and gentle bleeps and bloops of the electronics, there are a number of anxiety-fueled, metal-style crescendos strewn in throughout. And, honestly they're probably the only thing that truly keeps tracks on this from feeling stagnant. It just happens that they don't really do anything for me. They burst and pop, but never really land a solid punch. They have a weakness to them that might seem suiting within the bigger picture, I guess, but that's also slightly disappointing.

Then again, if anything, that points more to what CUTE do well than to what they do poorly. Shoulders & Giants is almost exclusively about build-ups. Rather than relying on the shock and awe of its explosive moments, this derives nearly all of its power from the journey toward the distortion, rather than the distortion itself. It's not really about the emotion-hopping, in the end?it's about the preparation for the emotion hopping beforehand.

True, most of the tracks do end up melting into the same sonic blob as the others, but the sonic blob here is a pleasant one. The electronics add a glittering quality to what CUTE do, juxtaposing nicely over the barren, deserted quality of the ol' analogs, giving Shoulders a more colorful and fantastical feel than many of their contemporaries in the post genres. Something that makes Shoulders & Giants stick out over those SSDD post discs that old man Bitter's been pointing out lately.