ALBUM REVIEW: Pain Travels – Love Rarely
First releases can be an artist at their most authentic. Often, tangled threads of complex human emotions are spun with a rich tapestry of influences, instrumentation, and memories from home. Devoid of societal expectation and an aching need to find connection, a good full-length debut can define an artist. For LOVE RARELY, the Leeds-based post-hardcore powerhouse, identity has been etched in Pain Travels through years of lived experience, cauterising trauma with dazzling moments of cathartic sound.
Entirely self-produced, recorded in spare bedrooms and makeshift studios over the course of a year, Pain Travels is a tour de force of pent-up emotions. Navigating through generational trauma and tough family dynamics, the record peels back (in the band’s own words) “a journey of attempting to cope with life when you might not have been dealt the best hand.” Whilst rooted in such isolating foundations, there’s an immeasurable understanding of the self and how the past can move the needle on a better future.
LOVE RARELY’s sound on this record is fuller, more aggressive, and angular than 2024’s Lonely People EP. Pain Travels flutters with fast and uncompromising riffs. Shifting through textured episodes of aggression to sedation, at times it becomes wonderfully unpredictable, but still with enough of a hook to draw you back into the moment.
Will, the record’s explosive opener, doesn’t mean to do anything by halves. A dazzling introduction to the band’s evolved sound, it confronts chaos with a haunting duality of vocals. The kerosene of the record is this rich, swancore-inspired brightness in the guitar tone that builds such a devastating momentum to the record. The transatlantic sound, made popular by bands such as EIDOLA and HAIL THE SUN, thrives in the hardcore-infused grit championed by their Leeds hometown. Shown best in both Repulse and Severed, it cleaves close to the bone in aggressive and unapologetic outbursts.
The first half of the record displays LOVE RARELY’s vast range, as Haunted hits that sweet spot between upbeat sound and melancholy lyrics. Here, we are introduced to a more confident version of the band. It’s bouncy in the same way that will do extremely well in a live context. Given its sonic complexity, this is still such an accessible listen.
Where Mould and Whiplash are the oncoming storm and the band at their fullest, they cut into the landscape with proggy moments of course-changing trills. Taking the best from the modern scene, they throw classic MARMOZETS, into VUKOVI’s catchy chorusses and meshed tourmates THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS cheeky unpredictability into the majesty of PALEDUSK’s “if it ain’t broke” maximalist tendencies. A suckerpunch of sound, right when there was not much more room to give, but it does. Absolutely, it does.
The comedown of this episode feels gnarly and unruly, and with the biggest height comes the lowest emotional dip in Dormant and Disappear. In the reflection of the first half of the record, perhaps it is overshadowed – there are stronger songs that convey a similar meaning. The standard is high regardless, and closer Through Families gives so much to the overall tone of the record, proving that an aggressive band can do both. Simply, with Pain Travels, LOVE RARELY wins.
Rating: 9/10
Pain Travels is set for release on April 10th via Big Scary Monsters.
Like LOVE RARELY on Facebook.