EP Review: Hard Softee-Silent Screams and Little Things

Rock quartet Hard Softee from Tacoma, Washington, returns with Silent Screams and Little Things, offering a melancholic, relaxed, yet highly technical experience.

Silent Screams and Little Things

Hard Softee is a band that most would call gorgeous chaos. From their eccentric, sunny-seasoned, nostalgic instrumentals to Aal’s vocals that feel less like a sound and more like a force of nature against Yousef’s raw set of pipes, Hard Softee shifts the very emotional climate of each track their voice enters on the band’s new EP, Silent Screams and Little Things. A band that explores a fresh, unique spectrum of math rock while embracing smoother elements of jazz and pop, Hard Softee juxtaposes such aggressive candor with hardcore and metal trimmings, making this new EP not only volatile but also, with effortless precision as it progresses, crafts an experience that feels like they are learning to harness lightning in a summer rainstorm, with a result that is dewey, but never dulls its charge.

First tracks, “Backspace Ballet” and “Bubble Fight,” feel bright at their core, with a whetted, coppery undertone. Aal and Yousef’s vocals slice cleanly through these soft, progressive guitars, yet they sharpen the sound to distinct new territories, each track shimmering with vulnerability. While these two tracks show off distinct control and vocal swagger, each rises to a confident, powerful emotional altitude with melancholic finesse, then falls into a darker muse with unclean vocals. These unique patterns from the first two tracks open the floor for more expansive textures in the tracks to come.

Hard Softee

“Delicate Machine Terminated” and “Finding Nematode” dive into a murkier, grunge atmosphere. In this space, the EP begins to flex its creative wings. Within both tracks, one feels the difference in both excursions: one makes you feel pain, while the other lifts up the energy to keep going within the darkness. When “Finding Nematode” softens what “Delicate Machine Terminated” conjures, there is a subtle layer within this instrumental interlude that feels lived-in and understood, like an old journal’s pages that have been thumbed through many times over. This makes this part of the EP powerful in its execution, showing one drowning in a sea of their own pain, yet finding a way to fight through the depths of emotional turbulence and emerge changed, a smarter, stronger individual.

“Hanging (Curtains) in My Cage,” and the ending instrumental outro “Wilt,” while they fall at the end of the EP experience, are some of the band’s strongest efforts. Furious and fragile in the same breath, there is an athletic, technical stride to its delicate guitars and calculated, weightless drum playing that then pivots and shapes the EP into a beautiful, raw, unfiltered whisper of honest cadence.

Hard Softee

Silent Screams and Little Things is an EP that, throughout each track, carries an air of confessional honesty. This isn’t just an EP to unveil dark truths hidden beneath the surface; it opens up in a way that feels human and genuine. As we strive to figure out our own ways out of our personal darkness, they are still trying to figure it all out, too. It’s a journey that feels like a communal emotional barometer: elastic, expressive, and fearless; unafraid to show cracks in their exterior. If Silent Screams and Little Things were someone who has learned the power of strength through sensitivity, Hard Softee’s new EP shows that opposites can be intertwined threads within the same blanket, pulling on both with grace to form something that is both unapologetically frank and comforting.