Active Listening: Night on Earth, Nate

The instinct is to call Empath an "experimental" rock band. No other genre signifier fits cleanly, the impulse goes, so let Active Listening: Night on Earth sit in the junk drawer with the other loose AAA batteries and beer koozies.

That sells the record short, but not by much. Empath's experiment is no different than the ones run by Sonic Youth in the New York City '80s, or by the Wham City collective in post-Y2K Baltimore. If those references make any sense, Active Listening will sound like settled science.

For the rest, here is a noisy record with fleeting moments of melodic songcraft. It's loud, both in density and volume. It's disjointed, but not angular. Warm, but not hot. Chaotic, but not cruel. There are words, but they're texture, not text. What it says about rock music has been said since CBGBs was something more than an airport diner. It sounds different, unless it sounds familiar.