65daysofstatic – 'Don’t Go Down To Sorrow' (Monotreme) Released 09/04/07

A three-minute opera that Trent Reznor would have given his right arm to include on 'Year Zero', 65daysofstatic continue their trend of making earnest math-rock that on anyone else would sound horrid but somehow fits them like an overly-complicated glove. Segueing from an unnervingly Linkin Park piano intro into a swooning orchestral sound, it never quite gets over the feeling of Black Beauty orchestrated by nerds but is quite luscious enough to blot out the mental images of large horses saving kids from wells. Still, by the time glitches and windchimes kick in towards the end it’s enough to make anyone scream for a guitar, which B-sides 'Morning in The Knife Quarter' and 'The Major Cities of the World Are Being Destroyed One by One by the Monsters' (that must have been one helluva party when they came up with that name) deliver in tidy, thoughtfully constructed spades. An epic on the film soundtrack scale, this bodes very well for their forthcoming album.