George Jeffery’s A beginner’s guide to post-hardcore #6
Lesson 6: Reuben
As promised, this week I will be beginning my rampage of digging up dead, old UK post-hardcore bands. The first band to be mentioned is, obviously, Reuben. Despite their ten-year lifetime and numerous outstanding releases, they failed to gain any mainstream success (as is the story for most bands in this series). For some reason, the good post-hardcore bands from the UK seem to all come from Surrey and Reuben are no different.
They formed in 1998 and their intense live shows made them a household name in the underground music scene, gaining a lot of fans and admiration from other bands. This continued despite not releasing their first full-length until 2004. The three albums they released in the following three-year period were all incredible and it’s a shame they didn’t achieve higher levels of popularity, especially within the UK. However, I personally think their final album, In Nothing We Trust, was their best. From listening to any selection of Reuben’s songs, you will realise that their style is incredibly diverse. There are some songs you could listen to and not notice it’s the same band at all. Some of their tracks are mellow and some (quite a lot in fact) are heavily pop-infused, unreconcilable with post-hardcore even a little bit.
This brings me to the reason why I prefer the most recent album: because it’s the rawest. Despite their diverse sound, I have to say that for me, I like the heavier tracks and In Nothing We Trust delivers forceful riffs and ridiculous drum smashing by the truckload. Their widely varied setlist saw them attract all different types of people to their live shows. Perhaps the most engaging thing about them though was their unique sense of humour always present in their videos and gigs (watch their ‘Michael Jackson’ video on YouTube). For these reasons, Reuben were one of the gems of UK alternative rock music and all we can do is hope that one day they will return, but for now check out the recommendation below and come back next time for more UK post-hardcore thrills!
Writer’s Recommendation
A test of what we’ve learnt so far: listen to the song ‘Crushed Under the Weight of the Enormous Bullshit’ and you should recognise some of the bands and albums mentioned in the song from previous lessons.
