I AM THE AVALANCHE - I Am The Avalanche

Sometimes you come across records you simply don't know what to say about. This is the case with the self-titled debut from American quintet I Am the Avalanche. I tend to distrust anyone who talks about "real" music as opposed to chart-topping pop phenomena. That's a distinction born of prejudice and/or pure taste, given that value can be found in any genre, regardless of how genuine the proposal is. A more plausible contrast, tendential and purely descriptive, is the one between adolescent music and everything else. That category is highly variable depending on territory and social context, yet it's easily recognizable. And it's in that category, and that category alone, that I Am the Avalanche find their vital space.

The record mixes pop-punk and emo-core, using three guitars to build a wall of sound, ending up as the soundtrack for the young white American college kid: something of an equivalent to Anna Tatangelo for the low-income teenage girl of southern Italy. Granted, that's a crude and superficial generalization: yet it's true and fitting for framing this particular case. You don't need to actually play your instruments (or pretend to) to automatically end up with a higher artistic value than an Anna Tatangelo record: and indeed the musical value is precisely nil on both sides of the comparison.

The band basically limits itself to playing twelve tracks that all sound the same, occasionally faking a bit of variety only to let it drop into a void within a few seconds. It doesn't dare venture into the extreme catchiness of Blink-182, trying instead to strike a tone that's at least plausible if not serious, and because of this it leans even harder into flatness, ending up with a record that, to the ears of an actual music listener (as opposed to the target demographic this product is aimed at), doesn't even sound bad — it simply sounds like it has no reason to exist.

So all you need to do is listen to the opening track, "Dead and Gone", and you've heard it all. Guitars strumming away in wall-of-sound fashion, an opening melody that isn't especially catchy, a bouncy bass line (party-ready: though surely not every track will be like this) — the surprise comes in a brief cabaret-style interlude of shouted vocals and piano notes. "New Disaster" pushes the vocals a bit further, a touch more screamed and more anguished, but this time no theatrical twist comes to the rescue. That will arrive with "Murderous", which opens with Caribbean, vaguely reggae rhythms. "I Took a Beating" is faster; "Symphony" is horridly romantic; "Clean Up" is the (only) ballad of the bunch, thoroughly insignificant; "My Second Restraining Order" shuffles along rather aimlessly. Perhaps the only track to land on a decent idea is "This Is Dungeon Music", where the usual wall of sound opens up into a chord progression that's actually fairly decent.

Even within its own natural habitat, "I Am the Avalanche" is a poor record. Honestly, I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending it to anyone on earth.

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30/04/2026