Stage Four

Oh wow. I didn't expect to see this here. I'm a pretty big fan of this band. I love this album but it's hard to get through because of the lyrics. I just lost my mother this year. However, the timing of getting this album is quite something: my mother in law was just announced as being cancer free (she was stage four herself) the day prior. I love this band, I love this album and while it's still a hard listen due to the subject matter at least I now have a positive association with it as well.

Remember when this one dropped into rotation at my college station, and though my music taste was pretty atrocious freshman year I could still realize this shit rocked. Vocals like this usually strain my patience, but the ragged and thin texture works well against the shifting guitar underneath – sleek and clean until it becomes ragged on the edge at a moment's notice. Incredibly well-crafted album that feels so much longer than its 36 minute runtime (in a good way) and left me craving more, great add and a needed blast from the past.

I’ve always been more into La Dispute than Touché (for reasons I can’t really explain as they’re basically the same band) but this is a really strong post-hardcore record with some very emotional and well-written lyrics. Some of the songs at the start are maybe a bit samey but there’s a lot of variety towards the second half, with a bit of a midwest emo influence on a couple of tracks and a quite lovely surprise Julien Baker duet

I've really been enjoying being exposed to a lot of post-hardcore and, metalcore on this user-generated list this year. I never would have picked this up on my own, but I totally loved it! Listened to it twice through.

I can completely understand the criticism that the music is actually pretty interesting, but the vocal delivery is as uninteresting as you could imagine. Still, i don't know what it is about it, but it completely works for me. The vocal delivery is pretty monotone in its style, but it does have passion and pain, the lyrics are intentional and certainly evoke a feel of pain and loss. Never heard of this group before, but i will definitely be exploring more of the catalog. Loved it.

This album is heart-breaking. I thought initially that the harsh scream vocals were annoying but then, upon re-listen, I liked their impact more than the sung vocals of other tracks. Such a thematic wonder and a glowing tribute to someone truly loved and lost.

Nice discovery! Thanks!

Not heard of this before, interesting and at the same time chill and challenging.

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Flowers and you, New Halloween, Rapture, Palm dreams

I liked this. Did not know what post-hardcore was meant to sound like. But this was a pleasant surprise

The instrumentals feel kind of like Title Fight or Manchester Orchestra to me. The lyrics are plain-spoken and without metaphor, which I enjoyed at certain points but found a little basic at others. I enjoyed it. Call it a 3.5. Favorite tracks: "Skyscraper", "Eight Seconds"

I love this album but objectively it fades a bit in the middle

May 12, 2025 HL: “Skyscraper”, “Displacement”, “Benediction”, “Flowers and You” I generally don’t go out of my way to listen to this kind of stuff, i.e. melodic hardcore. But as someone who lost their mom to stage four cancer, I say here is an excuse to scream. Thanks for sharing

Thought I’d hate it but it’s great!

Mad respect for that "wave" of American post-hardcore / emo-adjacent acts that brought us so many excellent LPs at the turn of the 2010s, and keeps on doing so today. La Dispute, Defeater, Touché Amoré... The latter are admittedly the ones I'm less familiar with among the three I've quoted up there, but that doesn't make them less good -- it's just that an undefined set of circumstances made me go to the two other acts first. From all the Touché Amoré records I've listened to so far, it looks like the Angeleno band is the one in that bunch displaying the least variations from track to track (or from album to album, even) -- to the point when it sometimes becomes a little hard to differentiate their songs or memorize their discrete part. It's all the more ironic since vocalist Jeremy Bolm is not merely good with one-note screamed vocals, he also has a great voice for "clean-sounding" sung parts (as in "Benediction"). And using just a little more of the latter would have added needed dynamics to this LP, I think -- just like Defeater did when they added barebones acoustic songs to their hardcore punk scorchers in their own early concept LPs, or when La Dispute switched from agitated dirges to very slow atmospheric cuts, with the bpms in the songs going from one side of the spectrum to the other... That said, what Touché Amoré lose in variety, they make up for it tenfold through the strong cohesiveness of their musical offerings. The one-two-three punch of "Eight Seconds", "Palm Dreams" and "Softer Spoken" in the middle of the tracklist is for instance a great example of such convincing cohesiveness -- just like the one of the first three songs on the album, actually. And when the band's different assets (melody and aggression ; screamed and sung vocals) are all brought to the same track on a silver platter -- like in the awesome "Skyscraper", featuring the equally awesome Julien Baker -- everything perfectly aligns. Add the confessional, often heartbreaking lyrics, and the very personal concept at the heart of this particular record, and you have a more than decent contender for the users list. While La Dispute excels at poetic dirges and metaphorical ditherings, and Defeater kills it penning full-blown working class narratives, what Touché Amoré does is obviously more straightforward and/or less topical as a whole. But that doesn't make the results less interesting overall... 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 3.5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 26 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 38 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 67 --- Émile, j'ai mis ma dernière réponse sous l'album de The 1975 au dessus...

One hopes this served as an effective mourning strategy (or primal scream therapy), because it doesn't offer much musically. One can't abide the vocals, other than the first half of "Benediction," say, which seems almost like a normal indie rock song, and "Skyscraper," which is easily the best cut (no screaming will do that) and very much a proper indie rock song. Chiming guitars on "New Halloween" are decent, as is the rumbling bass and rhythm of "Palm Dreams." "Softer Spoken" very much should have been. Otherwise this is forgettable, and woudln't suit the list proper (though one might prefer it to most of the Metallica on offer). Recognizing this is definitively not one's thing, one's nevertheless intrigued by the question of who thought this merited a Deluxe Edition.

Stage Four wasn't what I expected at all, but was quite good and fairly interesting. The subject matter is really hard to say the least, and the incredible pain and angst is tangible, though I think some of it gets lost in the vocals because they're a bit generic in approach for the genre. Not that they're bad, but some of the personality trying to convey his sorrow and anger and heartbreak doesn't quite reach you because so many post-punk singers sing like this. You absolutely feel it in the music though, it's musically much more appealing than it is vocally, but I think overall I liked this as much as the two Alexisonfire albums we had, maybe more in places. Those both got 4s so I think this gets up there too.

It's labelled as post-hardcore but I don't hate it. What a fuckin bonus haha. Full of monotonous Rollins-isms in the vocals, and the lyrics started to get really annoying (sorry, I just don't care if your mum died and it's very personal and blah blah blah), but someone in there has an ear for melody and the drummer is doing some interesting stuff at times. 3/5.

Pretty much hardcore? Well performed, and I appreciate they are taking on serious subject matter - for once appropriate to the genre's generally self-serious tone. Just not my thing though.

I loved the music, it reminded me of the rhythms they play in Japan, however the singer did not convince me, he is the classic performer who wants to do everything by shouting, I know that is how punk rock or metal is, but I think there should be a balance of volume that does not harm the music. 2.5 stars

Not especially memorable

Oh boy, this was visceral and so hard to listen to at times, but such a lovely, honest expression of pain and grief. Musically, it was nuanced and creative in ways that both complemented and struggled against the lyrics in interesting ways. Thanks for sharing this. Fave Songs: Flowers and You, Displacement, Rapture, Benediction, New Halloween

The sound minus the voice would make it a superb album.

Whatever happened to you I’m so sorry

Musically I could very much appreciate this, but the vocal style kind of ruins it for me.

A good hardcore album that is really becoming the new metal style that people are into. This is one the softer side of the genre shockingly but I found that a little easier to digest. Some of the metalcore and post hardcore groups are too intense for me. This band was nicely in that middle area of hardcore instrumentals and sufficient lyricism that could be understood. 6.2/10

It sounds like a modern 90s punk band

Passable emo fun. Loved it lyrically more than musically.

Soild hardcore album, just not sure if rush back to it.

Nice to see an album like this on the list. I think I saw Touché Amoré like 5 years ago, with Baroness and Deafheaven 🤟

I wanted to like this a lot more than I ended up liking it. even though it's a brisk 33 minutes it felt way longer. Possibly because I just didn't enjoy the screaming lyrics. It just did not work for me. Even a cameo from Julian Baker didn't save it. My personal rating: 2/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No

Started playing this and immediately had a bad feeling - not sure I’m up for getting screamed at for 35 minutes. But there was something a little melodious and interesting going on with the vocals, and I was catching some interesting lyrics in the first two songs. Looking at them it was clear there is a lot of pain in those lyrics. Intrigued I pulled up the Wikipedia article and learned more about what was behind those lyrics. This isn’t my genre, screaming vocals aren’t my cup of tea, but the music was good and the lyrics were a real surprise. The occasional moments of regular singing vastly appealed to me. So while I can’t say that I will listen again, it was more interesting than I thought it might be initially.

Heavy

It is a good album, but I did not like the vocals. I don't have issues with screaming, but the music has subtilities that the vocal delivery diminishes. I guess (for me) the guitars should be more distorted than the vocals. The other way around does not work. So grunting with death metal is ok, screaming with rather elegant guitar rock does not. The songs with partly "normal" vocals sound a lot more appealing (Benediction, Water Damage).

Pretty good

A bit shouty but I’m sure he had something to say.

Enjoyed this. But would have to listen more to get a four.

I can't take this seriously with the subject matter and the vocal style.

I realize this makes me sound 100 years old, but I just don't get all the yelling. Usually with hardcore music like this I just dismiss it as bad, but in this case the music is really good. I'd love to hear what an actual singer would do with these songs. 2 stars.

Fourth studio album. Yes! Released on the 24 of 2016, which are both divisible by 4. There's also a song called Eight seconds! Ultimately, it's not really that great of an album for me. Seems fairly formulaic and without much emotion.

Post-hardcore, melodic hardcore, screamo. No me van estos gritos... Un 2.

Generic American shouty rock music. Rating: 2 Playlist track: Touché Amoré Date listened: 09/12/24

I like post-hardcore, but man, this guy is only capable of yelling in one specific tone and it makes everything blend together so much. Very repetitive and very depressing. Wasn't in the mood for something like this right now. Rarely am. Interesting choice though.

Felt like an early 2000's punk rock album, yet it came out in 2016.

Ugh, like, I’m sorry for your loss and all but do you have to make it everyone else’s problem?

Another "no thanks" entry for me. Screamo stuff, veers almost into pop punk territory, just fell flat for me. Not something I'd return to. 1.5/5

Fuck off with this corny screamo bullshit. I could’ve been listening to fotschi tong another 10 times instead of this trash.

Those vocals are incrediblely tiring.