Album Review: Split Single Show That Life Is Built In ” Metal Frames”

Split Single released the metal pop album Metal Frames. Led by vocalist Jason Narducy, this Chicago native took the time to write a challenging record. Metal Frames is his effort to approach not the tree of love, but its branches. In other words, if sentiment is the base of human relationships, Split Single wants to analyze its reactionary branches. Enter Metal Frames as infectiously melodic metal-pop cast over lyrics of thoughtful tension. 

Metal Frames is an album that is founded on the dark, but strong structures that build relationships. Who and how we love can be dangerous to our spiritual growth, and in songs like “Untry Love”,  “Goodbye World”, and “Silences Mercy” just by the titles you can see Narducy’s desolate lyricism. How companionship can leave you feeling lonelier, than when you are actually alone, confuses everyone? Yet, Narducy writes lyrics that explain being with someone whom clashes with your being in thoughts, words, and deeds, will leave you feeling like no one can ever be your partner. When you decide to give yourself to someone that does not match your essence, then you end up like Evaline of the song  “Evaline Makes Believe” where your delusions clash with any opportunity for your enlightenment. This may seem like a simple enough conclusion, “Be real with yourself, even when in love!”,  but Narducy sings that the simple is the hardest thing you can reason in a relationship. Why? Because emotions are not always rational, which explains the metallic sounds and images that mold Metal Frames. 

In many ways rock and pop are the best genres to blend in showing the angst of love. Jon Wurster on drums and John Stirratt on bass create rhythms that drive this virtue’s madness. Stirrat creates heavy, quick chords that represent the freneticism of relationships; one minute your on the top of a passionate mountain only to fall down a volcanically boiling, but jagged cliff. Meanwhile, Wurster’s drumming sounds like the heartbeat that follows Stirrat’s freneticism. Whether it is a slow, pulsing kick-drum in “Blank Spaces” or a loud force in “Perilous Pill”,  Wurster’s  drumming embodies how our hearts feel every inch of our thoughts and turmoils. Cue Narducy whose voice is coated with pain. His vocals feel like raw flesh left to the brazing sun of love. This may sound like a dark, gory analogy, but in Metal Frames you learn that love, when its not right, make you feel very grotesquely wrong. Such a message needs a voice like Narducy that can grasp the gutting emotions that tussle people’s minds until they become as thin as tissue. Hence, Nora O’ Connors featured vocals on songs like “Leave My Mind” to both harmonize and push forward love’s waning of one’s metal/ mindful frames. If you think that love cannot melt your metallic, soulful barriers, this fantastic record shows the ugly, fiery power of love in truthful, head-banging orchestrations.