Self-released digitally on June 24th, This Life is a Beautiful War by Pennsylvania post-rock artist h e r e a f t e r marks a follow-up to his debut album In the End, We’ll All Become Stories, which initiated a compelling fusion of post-rock, post-hardcore, emo, and metal elements that carry over with even more confidence into this release. His new offering showcases fantastic dynamics and shines bright with its powerful blend of vast soundscapes that collide starkly with an expansive, visceral onslaught.
h e r e a f t e r is the brain child of Pennsylvania multi-instrumentalist Rob Evraets, Jr., and continues a recent trend of uncommonly rich releases from solo post-rock and post-metal artists.
It used to mostly just be Cloudkicker pulling that trick off exceptionally, but in the past few years artists like h e r e a f t e r, Panopticon, Secret Gardens, Thought Trials, Darkfield, Death Stare, pictures of wild life, and Seabreather – just to name a few – have been changing the narrative on this, releasing legitimately great music that doesn’t fall into the myopic traps often associated with one-person bands.
Evraets, Jr. has been one part of The Post-Everything Collective, which features some of the aforementioned artists, and in March 2022 collaborated on a massive compilation album that raised and donated over $10,000 for Ukranian support. The alliance between these solo artists persists onto “This Life is a Beautiful War”, with contributions from Secret Gardens, pictures of wild life, and Seabreather.
““In the End, We’ll All Become Stories” was a culmination of emotions/events/things I had never processed.” – comments h e r e a f t e r.
“I’d gone through life basically pushing it away thinking I’d never have to deal with it. That album was how I processed 12 unique situations I had never processed previously. So for this album, “This Life is a Beautiful War”, I decided to continue that trend; however, instead of 12 separate stories, this is one story.”
“It starts out with the song, “Retrospection”, the album opener, which is actually the end of the story. Looking back and reflecting on how I (or the listener) got to this point and thinking, “wow, this all just happened and here I am now”.” – continues Rob.
“I placed each individual track in a way that they flow very nicely together (or at least I think they do haha). I wrote it to process one of the hardest situations I’ve ever had to deal with/process that wasn’t done in the last album, but I also feel like I wrote it in a way that anyone listening could relate in some way or another in their own scenario or situation.”
