You're Just Not Yourself Lately Album Review
Rapidly Aging You're Just Not Yourself Lately
Label: None
Seven tracks | released 10/02/26 | full length
You’re Not Yourself Lately is a lush lamentation on the millennial midlife crisis. The debut album by Georgia-based post metal project Rapidly Aging. Centered around musician Shalor Howell and taking inspiration from his own life as someone crossing the threshold of middle age. The album tells an unfortunately common story. As the world spirals in chaos as it always does, we try to power through the uncertainty into the next phase of our lives, but we don’t always know what that is, and the advice we’ve been given is no longer valid. We look through social media to find community and answers, but we don’t even see ourselves as the person dealing with our own mortality. Song titles such as “The Negative Thoughts Loop,” “Awoken from a Bad Dream to an Even Worse Reality,” & “How Quickly the Ground Falls Out Beneath You,” echo those feelings of despair, isolation, and disassociation.
The album features sound bites from the 1974 French film “Un Homme Qui Dort (The Man Who Sleeps).” A film about a young man who begins to feel indifferent toward the world and feels isolated and hopeless. A reality many our age grapple with.
Sonically, the album is beautifully layered. Swaying between dense and heavy and atmospheric and spacious, never getting too muddy in the mix. With surprising crescendos and retrospective lulls. Musically, the album mixes doom, post rock, post metal, with perfect accents of ambient southern twang. This comes by way of perfectly placed slide guitar performed by Ethan Fogus, that adds a haunting element of nostalgia. Like a reoccurring dream. Afterall, it wouldn’t be a Georgia-based project without a little alt country. Fogus also contributes violin parts to the album as well.
Influenced by bands like Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Rosetta, Pelican, and 65daysofstatic, You’re Not Yourself Lately is a vivid conceptual soundscape. Offering originality in its thesis and distinctive instrumentations clearly deserving of its flowers. The album wonderfully mixes these various tones, creating something fresh to the genre and existing in its own space. The full-length album will be released on October 2nd.
Fondly reminds us of: Pelican, Explosion in the Sky Isis, Neurosis, Russian Circles
Music by Shalor Howell
Guitar, Slide Guitar, Bass & Midi Keys performed by Shalor Howell
Drums performed by Matt Hendler
Pedal Steel Guitar & Violin performed by Ethan Fogus
Rapidly Aging is Shalor Howell
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