Sense Field
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Sense Field , 5/10
Killed For Less , 5/10
Building , 5/10
Part Of The Deal , 4/10
Tonight And Forever , 4/10
Living Outside (2003), 4/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

Sense Field were a Los Angeles band that played a (very) unusual blend of progressive hardcore and emocore.

Singer Jonathan Bunch and guitarists Chris Evenson and Rodney Sellars deconstructed soul-pop melodies in ever different styles. The EPs Sense Field (Run H20, 1991) and Premonitions (Run H20, 1992), later reissued as the album Sense Field (Revelation, 1994), mainly showcase the band's eclectism, although it rarely coalesces into real songs, and, when it does, it may sound like a preacher's secret morbid vision (Dreams, Voice, Found You).

Too much melodrama turns Killed For Less (Revelation, 1994) into a personal Bunch odyssey with Christian overtones. The stylistically neurotic collection nonetheless yields a few punk-pop anthems (Today And Tomorrow, Killed For Less, Bue Glass Man).

Building (Revelation, 1996) is even more direct in its emocore approach, and way less successful in melodic terms (No Man's Land, Overstand).

The band is hard to recognize on Part Of The Deal (GrapeOS, 1999), a mainstream AOR effort. The few songs that hark back to their roots (War Of The Worlds, One More Time Around) are a pathetic reminder of past greatness. The rest is midtempos, layers of guitars, atmospheric keyboards and assorted stereotypes for mass consumption.

Delayed for four years, Tonight And Forever (Nettwerk, 2001), the album that was supposed to follow Building, was released with the addition of some late-minute songs. Other than a couple of riffs in Emergency Exit and Here Right Here, this is a collection of slow, romantic ballads (Save Yourself, Am I a Fool, Weight of the World, What Never Dies) occasionally redeemed by a bit of sincere passion (the Foo Fighters-ian No Longer Now, Fun Never Ends) but more often smothered in AOR arrangements (Love Song).

Living Outside (Nettwerk, 2003), after the departure of Sellars, is a little too generic, even for the emo generation. Evenson and Bunch begin with punk fervor (Burn) but then flirt with synth-pop (No Medicine, Take What You Want,, Haunted). Mostly, they bet on the operatic arias of On Your Own and Feel What You Feel to yield a new hit.

Bunch died in 2016 at the age of 46.

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