The deep distorted guitars. The bass drops. The screaming/growling. All of this could easily be mistaken as heavy metal. Well, believe it or not the self-titled album released by the brand spanking new band “Too Close To Touch” may sound like heavy metal, but is in fact punk music. Local residents in Spearfish, SD claim album to be masterpiece within its first 6 months of being released.

It is even gaining popularity among heavy metal fans/punk fans right here in South Dakota.

Post-hardcore is defined fairly loosely. According to Ryan Cooper a so called online “punk expert”, he sums up post-hardcore as just a vague way to describe a type of sub-genre of punk.

But it could be easily mistaken as metal. Most post-hardcore contains many modern heavy-metal elements, such as extremely low tuning and bass drops. Listening to a band such as “Woe, is Me”, could easily lose the feeling of a punk background. However, the brand new album “Too Close To Touch” encompasses the mix between modern heavy metal, with the old fashioned punk feel.

The EP is only 4 songs long, but is a great insight to how the rest of the artist’s work might be like, and it is a good outlook so far.

The album starts out with clean vocals right off the bat, and is soon chimed in with some great riffing guitars, without being overpowering. There are some screams, but they are very mild and guttural, which makes them very encompassing and easily listenable. The singer’s voice sounds very poppy, which makes it sound very modern, without sounding like a teenage girl. The album has great drums, that are very typical with post-hardcore, as they are not too fast paced, but still more complex than normal punk. The EP does contain a few bass drops, but just like the vocals, they are very mild.

One downside to the album, is the fact that it is so mild. It would be nice if the album could incorporate a few more things into it that were leaning towards the metal spectrum. The album could use an octave or two lower tuning in some instances. The sounds of the instruments do not jump out to the listener as much as the vocals of the album do. This could easily be fixed with future releases, as this is just their first release.

Local Spearfish resident, and punk enthusiast calls the album “classic.” Dudley is not much of a metal fan, but can easily digest this album, he says.

So the deep sound guitars, the heavy sound, and screaming, could be easily mistaken as heavy metal. But “Too Close To Touch’s” new release is in fact punk, rather a sub-genre called post-hardcore. However, this album is easily digested among internet fans and even local residents here in Spearfish. So go and have the album a listen; it is being streamed on YouTube for free.