Rosy Overdrive reviews Place Position’s Went Silent
Rosy Overdrive offers a kind and thoughtful review of Place Position’s Went Silent album. Read it below or here.
Place Position – Went Silent
Release date: January 23rd
Record label: Sweet Cheetah/Poptek/Bunker Park/Blind Rage
Genre: Post-punk, post-hardcore, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Chaos Herder Pt. 2
Here we are with Place Position, a trio from Dayton, Ohio evidently named after a Fugazi song, and who make music one might expect a trio evidently named after a Fugazi song to make. Bassist Chip Heck, Jesse Mays, and guitarist/vocalist Josh Osinkosky are probably all “lifers”; the first Place Position album came out in 2014, and all three of them have played in other bands in southwestern Ohio (The 1984 Draft, Shadyside, Landfilth…). Aside from a three-song single in 2020, Place Position had been pretty quiet since their first album, but the dozen-year wait for Place Position LP2 has finally ended with Went Silent. Those paying attention are rewarded with ten slow-moving but still frequently fiery post-hardcore/post-punk songs well-versed in the intricacies of the history of Dischord Records and its flagship bands; while it’s not as zen-like as Lungfish (or their best modern analogue, Vulture Feather), it does sound like a record that has benefited from its creators getting long(er) in the tooth.
Those who enjoy the “flag-planting anthem” side of post-hardcore punk rock will be drawn in immediately with “Chaos Herder Pt. 2”, a stalwart, unflappable post-punk opening statement. Like many a great Dischord record, however, Went Silent is also sneakily quite weird and subversive–this is apparent from the tense atmospheres propping up “Camber” in the first half, and it really comes to a head near the center of the album with strange art punk tangents “Buy Here, Pay Here” and “NO401OK”. Most everything on Went Silent is, to some degree, a “rocker”, but it’s to Place Position’s credit that they have a pretty wide-ranging and open attitude as to how (and when and where) to do that. If you want to know how to make music like this for the better part of twenty years, Place Position have put on a pretty good demonstration on keeping it fresh with Went Silent.