Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 1: Form is Emptiness

 I wear an iron mask to hide the ugly truth
Lifetime of gray skies

"In the Desert Sight Precedes Sound"
Lifetime of Gray Skies


    There were no press releases announcing Anodyne's breakup in 2005. The band did not hit the tour trail for one more victory lap. Burned out and creatively spent, the then-New York trio quietly canceled their plans for a European tour and laid to rest one of the most abrasive and aggressive hardcore bands of the young millennium.
    "I'm super critical of the fanfare people put on these things like 'This is our last show,'" said guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill, the band's sole constant through its eight year existence.
    It's probably a given that Converge will go down as this generation's equivalent of Black Flag, but Anodyne make a perfect Miss Congeniality to the other Boston hardcore institution's Prom Queen. Anodyne reeled off three vicious records, including apotheosis Lifetime of Gray Skies, and the requisite van-full of EPs in an eight year period, honing and perfecting their sandpaper scrape brand of hardcore. Unlike Converge, though, Anodyne fizzled partly because they were never able to identify a demographic hungry for their angular, driving, emotionally cathartic hardcore. Though Anodyne, itself, was never able to connect with a wider audience, it should be remembered as a proving ground for a series of musicians who would spin off into a host of creatively challenging bands as varied as Tombs, 27 and Defeatist.
    "It's something we all did together and it's something important to us," Hill said. "It made us grow as people and as friends. It helped us achieve the things we're doing now. It was a building block."