This Will Destroy You to play atmospheric jams at M-Shop

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Veronika Reinert

This Will Destroy You is currently on tour promoting their “New Others” album duology. 

Alexander Gray

This Will Destroy You, an experimental rock band from San Marcos, Texas, will be melting minds at the Maintenance Shop this Friday.

This Will Destroy You (TWDY) is currently on tour across the United States, promoting their “New Others” duology. “New Others Part One” released September earlier this year. In mid-October, the band had a surprise release for their follow-up and sixth studio album, “New Others Part Two,” just hours after announcing it on their social media pages.

Both parts of the duology were written as one because they couldn’t condense it to anything shorter than an hour and a half, drummer Robi Gonzalez said. To record the duology, the band rented out a warehouse in Los Angeles for a month, cracking out both albums in just a few weeks.

“Clubs” was the first song the group wrote with new members Gonzalez and Jesse Kees, and the only one they sat down and wrote with an idea in mind.

“After that, it really all just came out naturally. It was the easiest record I’ve ever written with anybody,” said Gonzalez. “It was just listening to each other and ‘jamming.’ Really it’s just the conversations we’re having and expressing feeling with music.”

After failed attempts early in their career, TWDY decided to forgo the use of lyrics and vocals in their tracks, instead allowing emotion-filled instrumentals to act as their voice. The average TWDY album has sounds ranging from resonant melancholy, distorted and crunchy anger, to pure, ethereal joy.

The band’s effect-laden guitar-playing is the focal point of their music, with the members making use of distortion and reverb to generate an engulfing atmosphere with their sound.

So as not to get lost in the sound, Gonzalez plays with delay and reverb pedals hooked up to his snare, which enables him to match up his effects with the guitars. He’s had pedals made specially for him by Oliver Ackermann, a former bandmate and designer for boutique pedal company, Death by Audio.

“You’ll see when we play live, it’s really a full band experience, we all play an equal role,” Gonzalez said. “There’s no main focus at all.”

TWDY considers themselves a “dynamic, cinematic” post-rock band, like something out of a movie score. Songs transport listeners to an alien world where the landscape — the mountains, rolling rivers and dense forests — is defined by their guitar licks. Songs build layer after layer of guitar, bass and drums before exploding into a climatic and powerful wall of sound.

No two TWDY shows are the same, and their performances are a different experience than listening to their album.

“The ups and downs, you feel more,” Gonzalez said. “It’s never quite exactly like the record.”

Where previous TWDY records were darker and more experimental, this one has a “new light,” and is easy to listen to.

“I hope [audiences] feel uplifted in a way,” Gonzalez said. “Our music, I feel like this new record, is very positive.”

Opener Steve Hauschildt, a Cleveland, Ohio-based ambient electronic artist, will prime the M-Shop for TWDY. Hauschildt, formerly a member of electronic group Emeralds, who disbanded in 2013, has been performing solo concerts since 2011.  

The show is Saturday, Nov. 3 at 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $17 for the public or $12 with an ISU Student ID — each with a $2 increase if bought the day of the show.