Written by Christian Segerstrom
Me and Him Call It Us’ 2006 classic album “Loss” was a significant improvement from their earlier work, in terms of both song writing and production, leaving a lasting impression on the underground scene. Heavily influenced by Daughters and Reversal of Man, the band seamlessly blended screamo and techgrind with ambient interludes and samples throughout, along with absolutely bone crushing breakdowns.
“Loss” is arguably one of the most important albums in the underground techgrind / mathcore catalog, and it’s legacy is as readily apparent and recognizable as the album’s iconic cover. Along with other important mid-2000’s releases from their contemporaries in The Great Redneck Hope, Tower of Rome, and The Sawtooth Grin, “Loss” paved the way for newer bands like Hayworth, An Isle Ate Her, Oblivionized, and more recently bands like SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Retail Monkey, Gif From God, and Second Grade Knife Fight, and embodied a complex sound that successfully blended what used to be several different and entirely disparate genres.
Me and Him Call It Us‘ sound could be described a number of ways, but at it’s very heart is, of course, punk. Hardcore punk, with heavy screamo/violence influence, however the band also employs a number of dynamics that range between calming and ambient interludes, to short and grinding passages, to obnoxiously heavy breakdowns coupled with whammy pedal (see “Innocent Bystanders Watched in Horror…”), the latter of these being the most memorable trait. Essentially, MAHCIU made it cool to play heavy breakdowns over frantic, high pitched vocals whilst still retaining the more emotive and sometimes ambient aspects that are more closely associated with other, less extreme sub genres like emo and screamo.
As of late members of the band have been involved in darker, more brutal projects, such as the now defunct Dead In the Dirt and a newer manifestation, Infernal Coil, which was featured on Mathcore Index’s 2nd compilation. The importance and quality of the aforementioned projects cannot be understated, but the lasting influence of “Loss” endures.
Christian can found spamming Facebook with the latest mathcore and mathcore-adjacent artists at Mathcore Index
