Breaking music genre labels, and staying as impossible to categorize as ever, vocalist Jordan Dreyer drummer Brad Vander Lugt, guitarists Chad Sterenberg and Kevin Whittemore and bass guitarist Adam Vass, more commonly known as La Dispute, dropped their third studio album, Rooms Of The House, on March 18. 

Just like its past two albums, most tracks follow the pattern of spoken word that slowly transitions into singing. This style is part of the reason why this underrated band rarely makes it onto reviewers’ blogs.

But unlike its preceding counterparts, Rooms Of The House isn’t as angry and rage-filled; instead it’s more calmed down. The urgency in Dreyer’s voice that made your adrenaline shoot up in the past two albums, is almost non-existent, only making its appearance on the track Stay Happy There, and is occasionally found in other songs.

When listening to this album for the first time, it might be a bit confusing if you compare it to the band’s earlier work. The message of each song isn’t as clear at first, like it is in their older songs All of Our Bruised Bodies and the Whole Heart Shrinks or King Park and instead of the angry guitar breakdowns fans have gotten use to, you are presented with cleaner relaxed guitar riffs.

Nonetheless, many bands change their style over the course of their career and this album seems to be the case for La Dispute. It’s not a big change, more of a tiny shift really, but it still makes an impact. The messages aren’t clear, but once you crack the lyrics’ subliminal messages, you realize that they’re more mature and deeper than some of the older songs.

Depending on what you want to feel on a given day, each song is a gem of its own. Somedays you’ll want to hear Scenes From Highways 1981-2009, fast-paced and heavy with the drums, guitar and bass, wanting to pack up, leave town and never come back. Other days it’s Objects in Space, the indy-rockish, spoken word, plot-twist song that will be calling your attention, when you want so desperately to crawl back into the past when everything seemed so much better. Whatever mood you might happen to find yourself in, there’s a song for it.

All the songs also seem to intertwine telling different parts of the same big story. Extraordinary Dinner Party seems to be the sequel to Woman (in mirror). Stay Happy There references to the storm happening in Hudonsonville MI 1956, the first track on the album. The tracks flow together; there’s not a song that feels out of place or has a huge musical shift. Instead they all have the same underlying music style.

Like another fellow hardcore band, Being as an Ocean, tweeted a year ago, “I’ve learned that hardcore music is not for happy kids with perfect lives.” This album is not for everyone. Not only because it’s heavy with emotion, and sometimes it’s the only thing keeping you from breaking on those late lonely nights, but also because this unusual band has been labeled as “emo”, “screamo” and “oh-my-what-in-the-world-is-this?” But nonetheless, that shouldn’t stop anyone from giving this album a chance.

Whether you are a fan of the band or not, La Dispute’s brilliant way of transforming words with sick background music to form a sort of sung poetry is worth listening too.

5 of the deepest lyrics found in the album

1. First Reactions After Falling Through The Ice: “I will never tempt fate. Not once, I swear.”
2. Scenes From Highways 1981-2009: “You said we’re so scared of alone and I knew what you meant. You want to go where it glows all those places where your watch doesn’t work.”
3. For Mayor In Splitsville: “All those secrets people tell to little children are warnings that they give them. Like, ‘Look, I’m unhappy. Please don’t make the same mistake as me.'”
4. The Child We Lost: “You were a flame lit that burned out twice as brightly as the rest of us did. When you left, you were light, then you tumbled away.”
5. Objects In Space: “All these things that push and pull me through history, to places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going.”