Some bands create music that mirror the ocean's tides:  soft moments are interspersed throughout loud or heavy sections. Others prefer to take the presence of a softly rippling pond, allowing one general theme to be periodically and carefully interrupted by new ideas or transformations on a recurring sound. The Dayton, Ohio threepiece Romance of Young Tigers, on the other hand, can be more accurately related to a slow-moving and gradually building typhoon. We've all heard the term "wall of sound" used many times to characterize moments in songs by artists like Caspian or Mono, however, while the aforementioned bands use walls of sound as cathartic points of accumulations and the resulting release, Romance of Young Tigers play little else but giant lumbering walls of sonic destruction.

Just imagining watching this band perform the songs from Romance of Young Tigers live is enough to damage my eardrums. The second track, "We Sing Sin", reaches hitherto unheard levels of "loud" and constantly builds to it's earsplitting finale. Romance of Young Tigers employs guitar distortion as one of it's major musical components and when "We Sing Sin" reaches it's climax, you can feel the music in your chest and in your bones. This is not a band to listen to if you are looking to kick back and relax to some melodic instrumental music; in fact, Romance of Young Tigers more closely resembles noise bands likeMerzbow and Massona then it does any of its post-rock counterparts. Guitar feedback and haunting sound clips are littered through the most experimental song (and the album's closer) "Cease Silent Soft Choir" and the final half of this song may quite possibly be the loudest music released this decade.

- Dan Wotherspoon