ALBUM REVIEW: Albeit, A Moon – The Light Is Bright & That’s Okay

a visceral and wonderfully evocative experience from start to finish, each track effortlessly melding into the next to produce what feels like a single cohesive work of art

Spearheaded by the creative masterminds of Tavish Papp and Kearny Mallon, and rounded out with a collection of their musical friends, Albeit, A Moon is a blackened hardcore outfit based out of Lewes, Delaware. Earlier this month, the band released their second album, ‘The Light Is Bright & That’s Okay’, and in doing so have provided what is going to no doubt end up as one 2024’s finest hidden gems.

This is a visceral and wonderfully evocative experience from start to finish, each track effortlessly melding into the next to produce what feels like a single cohesive work of art, as opposed to a simple assembly of singles. The album ebbs and flows between defiant, overwhelming aggression, and a beautiful tenderness that appears even in some of the album’s heaviest moments. All of it is paced perfectly, with a momentum that only serves to enable the emotive weight of the music to hit even harder.

The heavy oppressive weight of blackened hardcore collides with the righteous chaotic fury of post-hardcore, all of it intermittently weaved between glittering yet somber emo. The opener, ‘Cold’, demonstrates this perfectly, with its gentle instrumental opening exploding with into a musical wall of flames, embellished with screamed vocals that could perfectly accompany something you may find from a skramz artist. This surges into the phenomenal and anthemic ‘So Quiet We Lie’, with its visceral vocal performance buoyed by incredibly catchy rhythms and sparkling guitar melodies. 

This catchiness is present at various other moments across the album, despite its ferocious nature. This includes the hardcore tinged ‘Black Hole Song’, which combines it with an immensely well executed breakdown in the midsection, before entering a gorgeous instrumental passage marked by haunted, reverb-soaked guitars. A sharp contrast when compared to the likes of ‘Our Ghost’, with its overwhelming walls of harsh blackened hardcore guitars and percussion, and its almost progressive nature as it slithers and writhes just over the five minute mark.

All of this sonic violence is perfectly capped off by the absolutely beautiful closing track ‘Silent Take’, which strips things back to little more than a rough recording of vocals and guitar. The album’s reliance of claustrophobic, crushing rage is so brilliantly juxtaposed in this sparse and wonderfully vulnerable closing statement, truly acting as the ultimate moment of catharsis in an album that so often is soaked with pain; the quiet point of acceptance after the experience of trauma and loss, ending on a simple declaration of ‘we’ll never meet again’.

Growth is an often painful process, confronting what we seek to shed within both ourselves and those around us, as well as accepting that we too may be cut out for the long term good of another. ‘The Light Is Bright & That’s Okay’ is an album that conveys all of that beautifully and electrifyingly through its stylistic choices. Albeit, A Moon manage to keep things just imperfect and raw enough that this truly feels like a viscerally human experience to engage with, whilst ensuring it is also simply damn good music to enjoy. Beauty through brutality. 

RATING: 81/100 – Very Good

For Fans Of: Deafheaven, Martyrdöd, Touché Amoré, Chat Pile, Casey

Follow the band on social media below:

Instagram // Spotify // Bandcamp