Die Hoffnung

Love Songs

[3.5/5] Only a decade after their debut can we fence-in the band I Hate Myself with the label "proto-screamo," but it fits: Florida-based brothers Jon and Jim Marburger had the screaming, the hill-and-valley dynamics-not to mention an idea of introspection that equated romantic rejection to drowning and/or bleeding. Re-invented as Die Hoffnung, they’ve traded melodrama for a historical-themed epic of such density that Cliffs Notes should consider adding Gainesville punk to their canon. Sonically, Love Songs is animated by a bass-less guitar-and-drum tangle too spontaneous to be tagged math-rock and way too brazen for the oversized emo bin. And while the album’s metallic intensity can recall Steve Albini’s Shellac, and the friction between frayed vocals and scrubby riffs echos Circus Lupus (Dischord’s old sloppy-drunk anti-Fugazi), there’s no concrete comparison for the Marburgers’ latest achievement. It sure sounds like proto-something-we’ll just have to wait and find out what. (NO IDEA) Andrew Marcus