As I go through the music I never got a chance to share I am feeling lots of emotion. These feelings are mixed with excitement and melancholy. Not all the bands I go back to are still active. The next band we are going to talk about it Letlive, and they have since broken up. Their Wikipedia page and other sources reveal that they disbanded in 2017.
Letlive absolutely crushed me when I first streamed them in the summer of 2013. I thought they had such a bright future. They had incredible stage presence, great songs, they got good press, and they were backed by a reputable record company. Yet it still didn’t work out. They will ironically live on as the ghost of fame.
The song we are going to check out is Banshee (Ghost Fame) off The Blackest Beautiful album from 2013.
letlive. – Banshee (Ghost Fame)
I had the same feeling as both previous bands. I sat there at my deck holding my head in my hands my thinking “oh my god.” This music is so incredible. It made me want to put down my instrument, and I eventually did, but not because of them.
Letlive has a lot of punk influence, but they also have a lot of metal in them too. I hear Refused in the music but also some emo metal from the early 2000s.
The Video
The music video takes the listener on quite the story. Children change the channel from a Kurt Cobain look alike to Letlive on a retro ’90s TV. The children are excited. We are those children. Woah man, are you seeing this? I am, and it’s good.
There is lots going on in the video. Lots of little Easter eggs. The nirvana reference, the bloody money, the cops shooting an innocent person, the band existing in a TV. Take some time and look for yourself.
The Punk Problem
The song is catchy as all hell. “Swallow pride until I feel sick, the media taste better when you swallow the truth.” What a great lyric. To me, that is the spirit of punk saying “**** you” to the established social institutions. It makes quite the statement towards the media and how it can bend the truth. It’s a weird message because it comes from inside the media. If the message is to not trust the media, and the message comes from the media, who do you trust? This the point. A pretty cool message if you ask me, very philosophical.
The Band Says It All?
There is a short documentary about the band that came out in 2016. It is worth checking out. However, the documentary is in service to the 2016 album If I’m the Devil… released on Epitaph records. You could say this is a long-form promo video for the album. After all, they were a commercial band trying to sell records and tickets. Since they have broken up does this now count as a legitimate document of their history?
There is one great message we can glean from the documentary. Writing original songs is hard work. Everyone has a vision, but there can only be one song. An incredible challenge. The reward is extremely high when that song comes to life and you get to share it with the world.
If you get the chance to live as a musician and a songwriter you should do it. Not everyone can get the same success with their original music. But you don’t have to be successful to reap the reward of creating original music. An original song is its own reward in some ways.
So what now? Keep listening to the band, support their music and the spirit they evoke. If they are like any good ghost, they may come to haunt you.
You can get the album through Amazon with this associates link:
Wanna hear more of this story? Keep reading!
There is bot named Wilbert that likes to eat my website, so I cannot have a email sign up form anymore. If you want access to new content all you gotta do is email me! Newduereview@gmail.com
If you do that, I can enter you into a email list and send you goodies before they come out.