HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Hyperview — Title Fight
2015 left a TITLE FIGHT shaped hole in the hearts of emo and hardcore lovers alike when the quintet released their maiden voyage record Hyperview. Or was it? Despite being labelled as a band broken up, TITLE FIGHT never declared a break up or hiatus themselves, playing shows for a couple of years after the release of Hyperview and then all going on to work on different facets of themselves. In fact, Ben Russin’s Instagram bio still says “Skins in TITLE FIGHT / CITIZEN”. Surely there’s still hope, right? Right?
Listening to Hyperview is a completely different experience from listening to their debut record The Last Thing You Forget (2009), or even fan favourite Shed (2011). Overall it’s a sombre, bittersweet, shoegaze experience that paints your previously hardcore loving fiery heart an inky black. Early on in the record Jamie Rhoden sings “Hollow you can’t hold it in, pour out all your emptiness, poison in your mood” on Chlorine. Sure, it’s a big departure from Shed but listening through their discography, especially so on Floral Green (2012), the colour of softer and more melodic efforts would appear. All the signs for Hyperview to eventually exist were there.
There’s projects that have emerged since, and even before, the release of Hyperview that will quench the thirst for TITLE FIGHT fans; ANXIOUS, JOYCE MANOR, FREE THROW, and ONE STEP CLOSER for example. Thankfully without becoming carbon copies they hit the same notes that fans loved so much in TITLE FIGHT.
As a departure for the foreseeable future, at the time but also ringing true now more than ever, Hyperview became an underlining for the Wilkes-Barre outfit until they’re heard from again in the form of TITLE FIGHT. Allowing the bottled up shoegaze sensibilities, that had been leaking outwards for some time, to flourish. It feels very much that this was the last statement that TITLE FIGHT needed to make. When Ned Russin spoke to Norman Brannon (TEXAS IS THE REASON, THURSDAY) for Anti-matter the pair discussed the concept of interpellation and how easy it is to become one thing because people pin you as that singularity. Russin said “Maybe people have been saying ‘Ned from Title Fight’ so often that I’ve just become that.”
Since TITLE FIGHT reached a halt, Ned Russin has gone on to do brilliant things, the aforementioned GLITTERER, he became an author, and graduated from college. But, the underlining of Hyperview represents so much more than just a departure or absence — it’s an act of defiance toward the pinning of TITLE FIGHT as, just, a hardcore band or someone dabbling in fuzzy shoegaze. It’s a reminder that despite how much you want someone else’s art to stay the same, that doesn’t mean it should, and it doesn’t mean you’re right when you complain about change.
Similarly, early on in the lifespan of ONE STEP CLOSER frontman Ryan Savitski, also of Wilkes Barre, found himself at a fork in the road reminiscent of the one that TITLE FIGHT did with Hyperview, he revealed in an interview with Norman Brannon once again “‘Do you really want to tour with a pop-punk band and not do hardcore shows? Are you sure you want to do that?’ And it almost made me second guess everything.” Savitski explained on being questioned by friends. It takes an immense amount of courage to subvert the expectations that people have of you, especially when it makes you question if what you’re doing is the correct decision.
The dedication of the hardcore community, however devoted and ardent, can seemingly be stifling with what is and isn’t to be considered as hardcore and this idea of “selling out”. Take the current discourse around SCOWL and their newest single Not Hell, Not Heaven, fans and people within the scene alike have suggested that this, alongside a damn Taco Bell advert, is SCOWL’s equivalent of “selling out” or abandoning the scene where they came up. Whilst the response to Hyperview wasn’t the best they’d received as a band, it was hardly welcomed with open arms by all fans. So what’s the difference between a band that is trying to expand upon their popularity, and one that is already well established and disappeared from the world of recording after making a drastic change in their sound? People don’t like change regardless, however ever it’s much easier to try and criticise a smaller band with a woman fronting it from behind your computer screen on reddit.
Arguably, the events and fallout of Hyperview are more culturally important than the music itself, that defiant act, the projects and moments it has spawned since, how its softer sound welcomes it into the upper echelons of emo alongside all time greats like AMERICAN FOOTBALL. It allows bands like SCOWL and ONE STEP CLOSER to take creative liberties that aren’t always expected, or necessarily welcomed. That can only be considered as progress.
Hyperview was originally released on February 3, 2015 via ANTI- Records
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