He Who Saw The Deep
by I Like Trains

From MadhattanJack 12/20/2025 05:58 | #312216

"He Who Saw The Deep," named after the first line of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (the Standard Babylonian version from ca. 1200 BCE, not the "Extended Hollywood Remix" version from the 80s), is a kind of "transitional" album that sits squarely between (chronologically, not physically) the post-rock-vocal "crescendocore" version of I Like Trains and the more danceable darkwave-electropop version of the band that appeared on "The Shallows" in 2012. After releasing "The Christmas Tree Ship" EP in 2008, which admittedly was not that great, the band found themselves without a label when Beggars Banquet bit the proverbial dust. They decided to self/fan-finance, self-produce, and self-release their next album, namely this one, but they did rehire Daniel Skevington as their audio engineer. That might explain why the guitar sound and the vocals are closer to what's on the earlier records, with songs like "Hope Is Not Enough" sounding like they'd fit right in on them. But the rhythm section is much more prominent throughout this album, and the lyrical subject matter (aside from the titular Gilgamesh reference) is much less history-oriented, making this probably the closest thing to a conventional rock LP the band has made so far. It probably deserves more love than it gets — for example, here on BEA it's currently ranked dead last among their albums, unless you count the "Divorce Before Marriage" documentary soundtrack (which is all instrumental background music). For better or worse, it's probably their least successful album, both artistically and commercially. It's still a must-have though, and paradoxically, it might serve as an ideal introduction to the band's discography, due to that aforementioned 'conventionality" thing. (Edited)

From Secondsoul 12/21/2012 13:54 | #58447

Love this album. "Broken Bones" is beautiful!