Sometimes you come across a band that hits that sweet spot in the brain. Emptier is one of those bands for me. I haven't been able to not listen to their album, OMW, since I found out about it. It's been an almost daily listen and I go to see the band every chance I get.
That's why I always try to pay attention to what's going on in my own back yard. You never know when a band like Emptier will crop up. Especially in Pittsburgh where the music scene is so fractured and spread out across town with every clique refusing to break out of their own group.
Any time that I see a flyer with bands that will be playing at certain venues or with other bands that I'm familiar with, I always make a point to research all of the other bands on the bill that I might be unfamiliar with. It takes a lot of effort for me to drag my carcass out into the world so I have very little ability to suffer bands that I'm not into. When I saw Emptier on a flyer for the Sunday matinee show at the Shred Shed I made sure to check them out even though I was going to be in Cleveland the day of the show. When I came across OMW on the Bandcamp, I was less than thirty seconds into the song “Wiped Clean” and I suddenly had a new favorite band. By the end of the second song, "Mirrored World," the band had a new devout disciple.
The band is a three-piece unit with a very art/noise punk sound that is very much up my alley. I hear strains of Fugazi/Dischord bands, Helmet and METZ all throughout the album. I'm not sure how to classify bands or types of music so I usually default to Duke Ellington's theory of there only being two kinds of music, the good kind and the other kind. Emptier falls firmly into that first category for me. And they really remind me of the early 2000s Pittsburgh band Pikadori who I have been obsessing over lately.
The proof is in the pudding of their live show. I wonder how many hours Emptier spends in the practice space because they are extremely tight and run like clockwork. Out of the handful of times that I've seen them play, I have not heard anything that sounded out of place.
They play facing each other because fuck a crowd, they have changes to be on top of. It's very reminiscent of old jazz bands that would face each other so they can stay locked in and take visual cues from one an other.
I really like the picture of the band, above, that I was able to capture when they played at 222 Ormsby back in November of 2022. Each member of the band is head down and going to work. No one is walking through the music and they're all laying into it.
The last time I saw them play, Emptier dropped a new song in their set. From the sound of the new song, the future bodes well for Emptier and I can't wait to hear more of what they've been working on of late.
The drummer holds it all down so the guitar player can wander off and take care of business while the bass player/singer goes from a take no mess shout to a croon at the drop of a hat. I haven't seen a band that operates with this kind of efficiency come out of Pittsburgh in a very long time which is why I think I'm stuck on them. And if they're not careful, they might end up with me hauling their gear and stage managing their shows because I have a tendency to do that for bands that I get stuck on.
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