Apollo Up! releases "Walking The Plank"

It’s been ten years since Nashville’s Apollo Up! released the post hardcore blowout Chariots Of Fire and that amount of time felt right for Yewknee Records to announce that the album will be getting a special vinyl release to commemorate.  Featuring a sparkling new mastering job by John Baldwin (Public Image Ltd, Jesus Lizard), the lead single and album opener “Walking The Plank”, sounds as angry and vital as it did a decade ago.

All taut, fiery guitar lines and blazing drums, the song packs quite a journey into it’s 3 and half minute run time. Listening to this it’s hard not to be instantly transported back to the mid oughts. The ghost of bands like At The Drive In and And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead loom largest as the most immediate of touchstones but singer/guitarist Jay Leo Phillips isn’t all screamo fury. The most illuminating moments of the song happen when he and the band channel the same velvet draped darkness that Greg Dulli and the Afghan Whigs used to so effortlessly harness.

It’s one thing to re release a classic album to capitalize on the nostalgia of a by gone era but the new and much shinier Chariots Of Fire with any hope will simply introduce Apollo Up! to a generation of people that had never previously knew them. This way we can leave any sentimentality behind for at least another ten years.

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