Mystic Sisters is City of Caterpillar’s second studio album, coming some twenty years after their debut.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
That’s Dylan Thomas’ review of Mystic Sisters, written in 1947, and Thomas perfectly captures City of Caterpillar’s manic energy. I find that some music falling under the screamo tag can sound a bit trite but City of Caterpillar feel positively fierce. Fierce.
Here’s City of Caterpillar’s guitarist Jeff Kane from an article in The Washington Post:
“Ryan is into metal. Kevin is into ’60s garage stuff. Brandon is really into electronic music and techno. I like ’90s indie and punk — I’m stuck in 1996. But our overlapping musical interests are so specific, even if we called it something else, it’s going to end up sounding so much like City of Caterpillar, there’s no point in calling it something it’s not.”
Labels, whether in music or art or anything else, are really used to make people feel less frightened by the less familiar which is one reason I don’t typically use them. I have my own frame of references for City of Caterpillar’s sound but they are just that—self-referential pins on my personal road map that tell more about me than this.
Thankfully we can just listen. I recommend diving into Mystic Sisters head first free fall and see where you end up.