Gone Is Gone starts becoming its own band on Echolocation

From the opening moments of Echolocation until its grim close, Gone Is Gone’s latest output is stronger than its debut EP. The sound evolved fast: While both releases combine post-hardcore and metal in a radio-friendly way, Echolocation reveals a band that’s fought hard to discover its own sound, even if that sound is still best described as an amalgam of simple-but-heavy rock.
The band fires best not when it sounds like a combination of its parts, but when the musicians let loose and do things that wouldn’t fit into their other projects. The first 30 seconds of “Pawns” are straight out of a nightmare, an insane drum solo with bass serving as a melodic counterpoint to the scratchiness of Troy Van Leeuwen’s guitar. None of it would fit a description of At The Drive-In, Queens Of The Stone Age, or Mastodon, and it all comes together cleanly and crisply despite its hectic chaos. The blues-rock play of “Slow Awakening” into the blood-pumping “Fast Awakening” is a great one-two punch: It starts off like Southern-fried metal and evolves into a modern, hardcore “Highway Star.”