With the exciting news that Armor For Sleep is playing a select set of special shows celebrating the ten year anniversary of What To Do When You Are Dead, it’s about time we revisit the album as a whole.
Growing up, I was lucky enough to live in the FUSE generation – just about any and every awesome post-hardcore, emo, and alternative rock band worth their salt (Thursday, Story Of The Year, Thrice) had their music videos on TV. This was just before Myspace was a thing (think 2002-2004), and I’d come home every day from school and watch the channel to hopefully discover my new favorite band.
Armor For Sleep was one of those bands, except this was in my first year of high school that I discovered them. I may have changed immensely as a person in the decade+ since the album was released, but it still sticks with me today. The overarching concept of the album is cool on its own, but the music (which falls somewhere between Dead Poetic, Thursday, and The Juliana Theory) is more than solid on its own. Starting the album with arguably their best written song, “Car Underwater”, is a good start, and it only gets better from there, maintaining a strong consistency to hold the listener through the entire record.
Rediscover (or even for the first time, discover) the masterpiece below.
