Once upon a time, I knew nothing about Florence, Kentucky except the story of the water tower that reads “FLORENCE Y’ALL.” I see this tower at least twice a year while driving south from Ohio and back, and it never fails to amuse. As the story goes, the tower read “FLORENCE MALL” upon its construction in 1974 but was changed within months after the state’s Bureau of Highways alerted Florence that it was illegal to advertise a business that did not yet exist. Although the mall did open two years later, the “Y’ALL” remained. It has become a tourist attraction, and the local minor-league baseball team is called the Florence Y’alls.
In 2021, I learned a second fact about Florence: It’s the home of Scenario, a feverishly intense screamo band just clean and melodious enough to pass for accessible. Back then, we posted the group’s Sounds In Sequence EP. Today they’ve returned with When All Is Said And Done, their full-length debut. The album veers between frantic, soul-searing freakouts, more melodious, contemplative post-hardcore segments. And on highlights like “Voyage,” which arrives with a video by Danielle Elise Bartley, they conjure the electrifying shout-along spirit of peak At The Drive-In. (Acts Scenario actually cite as influences on Bandcamp: Kidcrash, Quantice Never Crashed, Capsule, Meneguar, Brighter Arrows, Botch, Cinemechanica, Boys Night Out, Refused, Comeback Kid, Funeral Diner, Folly, Portraits of the Past, Bloc Party, Bosse-de-Nage.)
Here we go, yo:
When All Is Said And Done is out now on Zegema Beach/The Ghost Is Clear/Mishap.
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