Description
Label Review.
2017 album.
Our Overview.
Seattle rockers Minus The Bear formed in 2001 and consists of current line up of Jake Snider (vocals, guitar), Dave Knudson (guitar), Cory Murchy (bass guitar), and Alex Rose (synthesizers, vocals).
The hallmark of their sound has always been between dark imagery and danceable, inventive rock and although they have been around for 15 years Jake says in an interview with Noisey: “The weirdest part about being in a band for 15 years is that it feels like you're still trying to do it and we're working just as hard as we ever have to get this band off the ground. Fifteen years is a long fucking time but it doesn't feel like fifteen years to me and I don't think it feels that way to Dave. We're still the band that's trying to get the good shows. Minus The Bear still has an old-school mentality of how things work.”
It’s been nearly five years since Minus The Bear put a new album out into the world, but that’ll change when the Seattle experimental-rock group release their sixth album, ‘Voids’ and Jake explains the bands hiatus and the subsequent album title name “I think "defiance" is kind of a good word for why we figured out we should keep doing it rather than give it up. There's a lot of reasons not to do this as a career option, especially after what happened internally. When you have voids in your life, it's things that are surrounding you and you have to keep going forward through that emptiness until you reach that next phase. We're old dudes and everything happened at once: Kids, membership disruption and other business-related situations that we're just remedying now. The name “Voids” does sound negative but I think if you talk to any member of the band we're living in the post-void world of Minus The Bear. But you have to write about the shit that you did go through and that's what this record is about.”
It’s been produced by Sam Bell (The Cribs, Bloc Party, Two Door Cinema Club) and promises to deliver a bit of a change in vibe, with keyboardist and singer Alex Rose taking more of a prominent role. “There was a lot of change and uncertainty,” said guitarist David Knudson in a statement, “I think the general vibe of emptiness, replacement, lacking, and longing to fill in the gaps was very present in everyones’ minds.”