Critic's evaluation
It comes from Rio Claro in 2021 and is made up of former members of bands from São Paulo's underground scene. Driven By only managed to release their first record at the end of 2023. Ourselves, their debut EP, is sold as a product that lays bare the traumas, wounds and abuses of everyday life.
The beginning combines lo-fi with hints of a fabulous Celtic ambience. While Wanderson Brieri's bass plays a solitary role with its precise and strident body amidst the hiss, the landscape that forms is rocky, dusty and full of breezes that carry with them flakes of sand that can bring both remnants of the past and messages from the future. It is then that a firm, yet softened blues emerges from the groove of Alison Carvalho's drums and the blowing velvet of Dane Alzilieiro's guitar. Marcus Vulgare's soft tone, with slight hints of bass, completes the rhythmic-melodic scope while reminding the listener of Theo van der Loo's voice. In an introspective mood, Driven is struck by a sudden thunderstorm that turns its torpor into acid, dirt and harshness. Alternative metal comes into play amid flaming echoes and corrosive raindrops. It's interesting, at this point, to see how Driven By manage to fuse the swinging, sensual delicacy of the blues with the strength and precision of alternative metal. And this makes Driven, a harrowing song that mixes concepts of possession, self-knowledge and belonging, while trying to find a meaning to life, a disturbingly epic work that highlights the mastery one has over one's own destiny.
The guitar, through the sonar of the distortion, has its image transfigured into a howl of agony that soon flows into a metallic, precise and densely melancholic environment between the use of double bass drums and strident riffs. In a tone that mixes supplication, despair and a densely numbed suffering, Vulgare soon turns Clona into an insatiable desire for escape. Escape from an exhausting routine. Escape from feelings of fragility and insecurity. Escape from guilt. Clona is a tear-jerking track that exposes the feeling of not belonging, while the character seems to recognize an incandescent and dangerous nature that afflicts others and burns his true identity. Ultimately, therefore, Clona is the protagonist's escape from his most chaotic instincts.
There is a suspense capable of captivating and instigating the listener to feel the nervousness and anxiety of discovering the next steps in the melodic line. To a certain extent, this quality brings with it a visible influence from Creed, who made much use of it in their melodic-narrative introductions. Bringing refinements of a melodrama sufficiently capable of introducing metalcore into Ourselves' sound recipe, Anzilieiro's guitar comes with the cry, while Hueller Figueiredo's base comes with the desire for rationality in an attempt to stop this kind of sadistic suffering. Lights, Shapes & Death comes in the form of a single that is contagious in its pain and anguish. It's a piece of work that brings the listener into itself and makes them sensitive to the character's desperation to get help to get rid of the bad, cannibalistic thoughts. While he begs for help and relies on faith in a mixture of honest and manipulative desire just to get out of suffering, the character is on the brink of madness encouraged by the confines of his own unconscious. Even so, Lights, Shapes & Death finds him in a state of profound helplessness that makes him spit out into the wind "you don't wanna save my life", a loose phrase, but loaded with pain and disappointment at a figure who has apparently left him relegated to oblivion and eternal coexistence with his own incandescent insanity.
Melancholy is still the dominant sensory ingredient in the new horizon. Gray, rainy and with waves of a saddening softness, the landscape brings with it tears, memories, clenched fists and closed eyes. There is, therefore, a generously contagious torpor which, as in Driven, is swallowed up by a dirty, harsh and, especially here, aggressive rumble. Reintroducing the unreasonable squeaks of lo-fi, Masks is a strong and visceral song that works almost like a linear continuation of Lights, Shapes & Death, as it brings an individual absorbed in his lethargic state of desolation. However, even more than the burning sensations of Clona, Masks presents the character lost in a corrosive state of guilt, but a guilt that is quickly forgotten by the need to prove self-sufficiency and the acceptance of one's own defects in a scenario where the absence of faith leads to the exhaustion of forces for change.
The acidic strumming of the guitar and the bass continue to bring tears to an uncontrollable state. Their faces are already wrinkled and their eyes are so red that they are unable to distinguish the colors of the horizon. It's as if the same energy as Driven is repeated in the same way, with the simple difference that it brings a more cutting state of suffering in its introspective muteness. I've Gone is distressing and as melodramatic as Lights, Shapes & Death, but it has a dark lyricism due to its dense hopelessness in life. It's like hearing from someone that the act of living not only no longer makes sense, but is compromised by the commands of evil spirits who manipulate the sufferer out of their own fragility.
Despite being intense, precise and very well delivered, each of the sonars present fails to hide the chaotic, tearing, lacrimal and anguishing essence of Ourselves. The album is definitely not intended to be a fairy tale about life and the good things it can bring. On the contrary. It's a collection of five melancholy visions of how the act of living can be exhausting and dangerous for the soul.
It's not for nothing that the listener, at various moments, finds himself in a state of gloom and infected by a hitherto illusory suffering. Bringing the pain and agony of the lyrical characters to themselves, the viewer finds themselves in an almost unbreakable harmony in the face of desolation and a curious sense of loneliness.
Forgetfulness combined with a lack of belonging mean that Ourselves doesn't even mention a safe haven to lean on and feel warm enough to let the tears that flow desperately from the wellspring of a sick heart roll down. A heart absent of love, compassion and protection. A heart that, alone, burns away any remnants of brightness and sensitivity.
To give weight and density to this blackened volume of melancholy, Driven By teamed up with Lucas Neves to make the suffering more palpable and tactile. With Neves, Ourselves exudes a mixture of post-rock through experimentation with melodramatic textures, but also, precisely because of this, metalcore. In addition, lo-fi and alternative metal merge with stoner rock through the excessive stridency used in the songs, as a way of externalizing anger at something omnipresent.
Finishing off the technical scope is the cover art. Signed by Wildner Lima, it is adorned with an exoteric base, but is excessively lost in a tangle of skull-like figures that decipher the absence of life. From the central figure, however, it's as if Ourselves is like a therapy, a monologue of five voices in search of what makes them smile and want to be.
Released on 11/02/2023 in an independent way, Ourselves is suffering, agony, anguish, crying, pain. It is the plea of five men who are searching, between conscious outbursts, for incentives and motivations. Horizons that will make them see life as something beautiful that has, in its challenges, the tests necessary to acquire the ability to walk paths governed by self-confidence and faith that everything has a reason for being. Ourselves is a musical book of self-knowledge governed by suffering.
