Milemarker - Anaesthetic

Anal's birth is the worst thing happening in 2001

The year is 2001. America is reeling from 9/11, and the world would be irrevocably changed geopolitically. More importantly, I was born. Unrelated to all that, post-hardcore was undergoing a metamorphosis. Once straddling the line between noise rock and hardcore punk, “post-hardcore” bands started tilting in every direction. At the Drive-In embraced progressive rock and technical wizardry, the emo movement was burgeoning, and on the horizon loomed a shadow named MySpace. At this juncture, one post-hardcore band released their third album.

Anaesthetic is not Milemarker’s first record to break with hardcore orthodoxy (which they adhered to on their debut). Frigid Forms Sell featured oddly cold and clinical keyboards laid over the post-hardcore foundation. Anaesthetic, however, embraced the electronic elements fully. Hardcore influences were pushed to the background in favor of two(!) keyboardists and layers of sound and melody, provided by an abundance of melodic instruments. The vocals also shifted entirely to clean singing, adding another layer of melody on top.

The result is a record that, while bearing nearly no sonic resemblance to hardcore in its individual performances, still manages to maintain a level of intensity and confrontation via massive walls of sound. The lyrics are juvenile and even hackneyed (this is post-hxc, after all), but the richness of the layered sounds and the careful construction make it easy to overlook—even for a lyrical stickler like me.

Milemarker would not win the post-hardcore wars. With bands like letlive. petering out, the rise of MySpace scenecore, and groups like Lostprophets disintegrating dramatically, post-hardcore rapidly lost what influence and power it once had. Milemarker, far from being a household name, soon faded into obscurity (not helped by an extremely inconsistent release schedule and multiple lineup changes). Anaesthetic nevertheless still stands as one of the more interesting examples of post-hardcore from the very early aughts, sketching the prototype blueprints for later electronic/hardcore acts such as Genghis Tron and The Armed. While many of these Birthtopster picks are influential or otherwise interesting from a perspective outside of music, it is my hope that Anaesthetic can be appreciated by more people simply for being good music—what it justly deserves.