Album Review: Holy + Gold - "Feral Children" EP

When you combine people from other really awesome bands, you can only get a new one that is more awesome. That is exactly how Holy+Gold is, former members of The Chariot, Norma Jean and Glass Ocean joined up to create this new band. From Atlanta, Georgia, they released a new EP called Feral Children.

The EP consists of 6 heavy songs with aggressive vocals and heavy guitar riffs. It changes styles a bit but still has heavy elements to it throughout. “Bat-Bird” starts the EP off and right away it reminds me of Every Time I Die. The way the singer sings really reminds me of Keith Buckley. The song consists of heavy guitars and a really strong chorus with strong vocals backed by guitar. This is a good song to start off the EP with, it gets you hooked and makes you want to listen all the way through.

The song that stuck out to me the most was titled “IV Witches”. This song started off at the beginning with a heavy sounding bass drum which stuck out to me. This song had the coolest guitar parts, each section of the song had a different effect on the guitars and changed riff styles continuously throughout. Around the one minute, 40 second mark, the singer says, “This is the part where everyone will join in and sing along”, almost as if he knows that everyone will sing at that exact spot at shows.

Another song that stood out to me was “Crooked Path, Crooked Smile”, the longest on the album. It starts off sounding a little bit eerie and slower than any of the other songs. The first lyric is, “The sun won’t rise on the side of the bed I woke from”, and it’s sang normally, with no screams. It’s very calm compared to the other ones on the EP. The heavy guitars come back a little bit later in the song but the vocals remain calm. Seeing as this song is seven minutes long, it goes through a lot of changes stylistically. Ranging from mellow vocals, mellow guitars to heavy guitar, mellow vocals to heavy guitars and aggressive vocals. Lyrically the thing that stood out to me in this song was the mention of sleep. Sleeping for a lot of people can be a problem and in this song it seems that it wasn’t very peaceful for the songwriter because of the way it was emphasized lyrically at the beginning and the end of the song. I feel like knowing that someone in the world is having the same issue as you could make a person feel a lot better.

For anyone who enjoys heavier music or was an avid fan of The Chariot and was or is a fan of Norma Jean or Glass Ocean, I recommend you give these guys your support. This EP is awesome and is filled with lots of different elements that all fit together nicely.

–