For weeks I’ve tried to wrap my head around Eyes No, the new EP from Modern Man. Listening to this album is a lot like being lost in a house of hallways with a blind fold on. The consistency of sound becomes unnerving the deeper you get into your listen. Distant voices, building, screaming, eventually yelling, the beat eerily consistent with a rapid heartbeat. Everything is masked except the drums, which remain your hold steady throughout the length of the album. It is these drums that open Eyes No and give you a point of reference.
For the first four songs Modern Man keeps the listener trapped in a deep haze, surrounded by swirling minor guitar leads, until the sky opens up with the 1 minute and 32 second interlude “Wasteland.” After “Wasteland” the album seems to settle down. The anxiousness settled, and while the fog is still around you, you feel more like floating than tense with sweaty palms. The album sets up perfect for the beautiful “These Walls”, the first time on the album where the lyrics are discernible for a full four minutes. Guitars that are clear, but have a slow burning quality, pick out the melody creating a new surrounding, or opening your eyes to where you actually are.
Eyes No excels at being atmospheric and dictating mood on the listener. As much as they push a haunting terror, they always reach out and bring you back in at the right moment.
- Scene SC, by David Stringer
On their recent second full-length, Eyes No, Greenville grunge-gazers Modern Man step up the intensity under the murky, swirling guitars and windswept vocal reverb. Full of dark corners and dissonant chords, the dirge-like title track is a highlight propelled by an insistent rhythm and frontman David Allen Glenn’s dispassionate vocal. The result shares a spirit (or maybe a specter) with TV Ghost’s haunted post-punk and Apache Dropout’s speed-fried garage, but the sound is a distillation of Velvet Underground throb and MBV’s densest slabs of ’gazer gauze.
- Paste Magazine, by Bryan C. Reed
From South Carolina, the group put on a witchy, explosive show that blended howling vocals from David Allen Glenn, crashing guitars and a massive arsenal behind the drum kit by Nikki Calvert. Their set seemed to blow the crowd away. It was intense and powerful; the songs recalled the hypnotic vibe of The Black Angels and the vocal haunting of The Cult’s Ian Astbury. Guitarist/singer Glenn tortured his guitar onstage, working it like a bar fight as he sang like a man possessed.
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