Rats Into Robots

Roaring out of Columbus, Ohio, Rats Into Robots were a screamo band active in the early 2000s. Their sound is a calamitous blast of screamo\hardcore buffered by long passages of eerie ambience. They're too melodic to be emoviolence, but they sure come close sometimes. This is aggressive, atonal screamo that's an assault on the senses, and I mean that in the best way. The album art does a great job of capturing the album's mood. Also, judging by the album title and at least one of the songs, someone in the band is a big fan of Dune.

The band doesn't have much of a discography. Their first release was a split with Textbook Traitors in 2003, followed by the 2004 album A Column of Smoke By Day, a Pillar of Fire By Night. That same year the band also contributed a track to the The Microwave Says To The Pacemaker compilation, which is a great bit of collected screamo.

Rats Into Robots Discography

Satellite Lost

From the ashes of the late, great The Cotton Weary came Satellite Lost, formed in 2003 and active until around 2005. If you're already familiar with the sounds The Cotton Weary explored in the latter stage of their career—especially the Cinematic Overtones EP and the unreleased album Your Three Minute Pop—then you're already primed for the direction Satellite Lost is going to take you in. This is post-rock melded with midwest emo, very wide and atmospheric. I keep running into bands like The Bitter Life Typecast and the bicycle project who explored the same sound at the same time, and if I find a few more I might be able to argue that there's an unacknowledged post-rock-emo wave that happened in the aughts—The Newfound Interest In Connecticut could be the most well-known example.

The band's discography is comprised of two releases and that's it. The first is an EP, Bows and Arrows Against Lightning, which was released in 2004. It is the rougher of the two, much more of a hybrid, closer to what The Cotton Weary was releasing at the end of that band's lifespan. The second is the band's only full length album, The Devil's in the Details; it was released in 2005 and features a more expansive post-rock sound. Both releases are good, but I think the second better realizes the band's ambitions.

Satellite Lost's releases are available on Bandcamp in physical and digital formats.

the bicycle project

Now here's a rare album: the bicycle project were a band from Nevada, and that's about all I know about them. They had a fantastic sound, a cross of post-rock and midwest emo. Their closest contemporaries would be bands like The Bitter Life Typecast and The Alexander, but the bicycle project can veer a little heavier in sound than either of them, and also make more use of long passages of ambient noise. The result is a mix of influences that sits at the overlapping points of midwest emo, post-hardcore, and ambient post-rock.

2000's where searchlights are weapons is apparently their only release, and we're lucky it's a full-length. It also clocks in at a whopping one hour and ten minutes, so they made it count.

where searchlights are weapons