Track Review: “Bad Dreams” by My Latest Failure

Sometimes you have to ask yourself if there is ever going to be a right time to do something and then make the decision to bite the bullet and get it done. That’s essentially the situation that Hardcore injected trio My Latest Failure found themselves in with the first song they ever wrote in “Bad Dreams“, never being sure when to release it and then getting themselves tided up in knots about whether is fitted in with the music they are writing now, two EPs down the line with a third very much in the works. Fortunately rather than listening to the Demon on their shoulders they decided to get the metaphorical Monkey off their backs with vocalist and guitarist Chris Underhill working with Ross Walker from Sore Teeth to record and mix a song about the recurring nightmare that leaves someone standing on the edge and starring into the abyss…

Listening to “Bad Dreams” it’s easy to see why My Latest Failure kept this one on the shelf for so long because it doesn’t conform to their usual formula of earworm riffs and catchy sing-a-long choruses that get stuck in your head. Instead it finds the band taking a piece of Post-Hardcore pie and going an entirely different route with flavours of “Everlong” by Foo Fighters in the riffs and Evergreen Terrace vibes in the unclean vocal parts as a cut with a deep seeded sense of meloncholia. The solo is as delicately balanced as the lyrical narrative of dark thoughts which contemplate the end as an alternative to a bleak future, while shouting from the roof tops that it’s only a dream. There can be no understating Chris Underhill’s emotive vocal performance here because he captured the weight and gravity of the lyric he inked with a gritty raw quality that really drives this one home is a sobering fashion. The perfect antidote to those sugary sweet summer Pop songs that have reached their saturation point by September, My Latest Failure have done us proud by releasing something far more fitting for the time of year [8.5/10]

If you like what you hear then you can find more My Latest Failure over at bandcamp.