Song: No
Album: Innocents
Year: 1996
Genre: Heavy Alternative / Grunge
Only Living Witness are a band I love listening to, but sort of hate talking about. I’ve got a whole lot of nothing when speaking about their history except that they’re from Boston and all their releases went relatively unnoticed. Giving an opinion of the music is easy; phenomenal. The real issue is describing the band's sound. Although they started out as a hardcore band, if I had to lump them into a run-of-the-mill genre I suppose they would fall within the realms of metal. Hold on, thought about it…indie. Heavy alternative could do it. Well, rock fits too. Wait...back to hardcore. That’s the problem. There are bands that play various genres but they seem to feature one prominently in a song and move to another in the next song. Only Living Witness is an amalgam of the aforementioned genres. Here's my horrible musical comparison; kind of like Helmet without the stop and go time shifts and way more melody. Please don't let that description stop you from listening 'cause this band is a hidden gem. Their two full length releases are worlds apart from one another sonically. Their debut, Prone Mortal Form goes for the throat with a more metal oriented sound while the production on their second record, "Innocents" reminds me of fuller sounding Louder Than Love era Soundgarden. Both records are filled with crushing groove-based riffs that lay a solid foundation for Jonah Jenkins gritty, emotional melodies. They were one of those bands that sadly went unnoticed, and while the Nirvana clones were being sucked up by all the major labels, Only Living Witness fell through the cracks and never resurfaced. They should have been huge.
Listen to "No Eden" here.
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