"Our guitarist, Jordan was the one who came up with the name and it was in fact in reference to the Beyond album of the same name," says No Longer at Ease vocalist Tyler Crawford when No Echo asks him if they got their moniker from the 1989 Beyond album of the same name. Of course they did, and that's not the only cool thing about the new North Carolina outfit.
Just released last week, No Longer at Ease's self-titled debut EP hasn't left my musical rotation since then. I could break down the band's stylistic viewpoint for you, but Tyler can handle that:
"Our sound is very inspired by '00s hardcore especially bands who were on Bridge Nine and Rivalry Records at the time, as well as some '90s New Age Records releases. Bands like Have Heart, Bane, Verse, Turning Point, and Outspoken definitely played a big role in inspiring the EP."
No Longer at Ease might have just hit the scene officially, but according to their singer, things have been in the works for a little while. "Me and a couple of the guys have been talking about doing a band since 2018, but it took us a while to actually get things working out due to me living in Ohio for a while and then even once I moved back we had to wait a little to get together cause of COVID.
"Once we were able to all actually get in a room together back in September 2020 it was pretty much smooth sailing from there! I played bass in a band called Substance prior (members went onto form Magnitude afterwards) as well as vocals for a band called Refocus and our guitarist Jordan plays guitar in Fading Signal and Soul to Keep."
Let's talk North Carolina hardcore since we have Tyler here. "There’s a lot of amazing bands doing great things in North Carolina right now! Groups like Magnitude, Search for Purpose, Fake Eyes, and Invoke are really putting the state on the map again, and they're also putting out some of the best hardcore-adjacent music in the past 5 years imo.
"Newer bands like Fading Signal, Ends of Sanity, Soul to Keep, Sparing, and Must Be Nice are showing that our scene still has a lot to offer and is still going very strong!"
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Tagged: fading signal, no longer at ease, soul to keep
