EP Review: Capsize-Under A Hollow Sky
- Sammie Starr
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
Capsize delivers a turning point EP, Under A Hollow Sky. Heavy and more polished, Under A Hollow Sky is an emotionally devastating, sonically gripping, and thematically cohesive experience that gives voice to those who have the courage to face their ghosts head-on.
There has always been something haunting about the soundscapes that make up Capsize. Not in a theatrical way of looking at things, but in how their music distinctly feels like they are writing from a room that is consistently on the verge of collapse. Their new EP, Under The Hollow Sky, continues to build on this lineage, redefining it and creating one of their most self-aware, emotionally articulate, and nostalgically disciplined efforts. Under A Hollow Sky isn’t just a teaser of what’s to come for the band this year; it's a portrait of someone trying to process their life and things that no longer fit as their life continues to change and shift around them during that process.
Within their soundscape lies a world decadently coated in melody and abrasion; yet, in their first experiences, “THE FRACTURE” and “RIP THE HALO,” Under A Hollow Sky reveals an instrumental energy that cuts clean as its lyrical undertones bleed out with emotional honesty and volatility. Its guitars carve out a space for that rather than overwhelming it, letting its emotional and melodic peaks and valleys hit in the right spots as its technically purposeful, percussive energies create a sense of binding. Rather than coming from a place of aggression, it helps to build on that space of emotional collapse that the guitar riffs are already creating, as its vocals—raw, frayed, and painfully human—only serve to accent this journey of rebuilding from events that have completely shattered them. Yet despite these first instances of pain, Under The Hollow Sky continues to serve as a confession of all of this, one that is not meant to be heard, yet the speaker stands brave in their resolve to tell it anyway.
“Ember” and “The Scars You Left Are The Only Proof I Existed” continue to showcase a nostalgic, heavy sound that leans into clarity without sanding down its edges. With every scream echoed out into existence as if coming from a place of existential rupture, every melodic line that piggybacks off its screams is the hand that attempts to pull one who is emotionally drowning from their own personal wreckage. Such concepts, building on one another, only come from genuine experience, and Capsize captures this in their sound: a wound still fresh and weeping, its opening still painfully breathing as it tries with all its might to scab over and find a sense of peace.
Its final track, “Under A Hollow Sky,” concludes this journey, steeped in agitated experiences that lie between the aftermath and the uncomfortable quiet that follows when everything has just fallen apart. The “Hollow Sky” becomes a metaphor of the internal dark void one stares into, revealing someone who has run out of excuses and illusions to hide behind. It’s not a final experience that poeticizes that void—it forces the listener to fester in it, and in its final moments, it lays everything bare for one to feel the impact of the blow.
Under A Hollow Sky is a rocky road that explores identity stripped to bare bones and dust, leaving one feeling like a ghost and, in those moments, wanting to disappear, while, on the other hand, desperately wanting someone to notice that their world is crashing down around them. In this voyage of emotional detonation, Capsize finds a way, amid panic and the ache of clarity, to create a moving experience that isn’t about solving the problem but about finding the voice to open the dark chapters of a life one was afraid to read again.
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