In 2013, Balance and Composure confirmed with this second album that they hold a place apart in the American post-hardcore scene. The Pennsylvania band does not chase speed or frontal aggression, but a density of sound, a melodic heaviness inherited from nineties alternative rock. The Things We Think Were Missing is a record that takes its time, even at the cost of demanding your attention, even at the risk of discouraging the hurried listener.
A heaviness that breathes
The sound of the record strikes you immediately with its thickness. The guitars stack layers, between low riffs and airier washes, while the rhythm section digs a slow, powerful groove. This mass of sound never crushes the melody: it carries it, wraps it, gives it weight. You think of grunge as much as post-hardcore, of that way of letting softness and rage coexist within a single song, sometimes within a single bar, without ever quite choosing between them.
The voice as a through line
The vocals, by turns murmured and howled, hold the whole structure together. They move from confession to explosion without any brutal transition, following the rises and dips of the writing. That dynamic, that constant play between restraint and overflow, sits at the heart of the band’s identity. The vocal melodies are strong and memorable, yet they never reach for the easy, instant chorus. It takes several listens for the songs to truly unfold and reveal their contours.
Coherence as compass
Perhaps that is the record’s limit: its homogeneity, its continuous density, can eventually tire a distracted ear. The album asks for real commitment, a sustained listen, and rewards skimming poorly. Some tracks resemble each other in their construction, and the whole would likely have gained from more contrast. But that reproach is also the flip side of a quality: aesthetic coherence, the will to dig one furrow rather than scatter in many directions, to make an album rather than a collection of tracks. In that respect, the record resembles its makers: patient, whole, little concerned with pleasing quickly. You return to it the way you reread a difficult book, discovering each time a layer you had missed, an intention the first listen had hidden beneath the mass of sound.
The Things We Think Were Missing remains an important marker of its era, a record that left a mark on the melodic post-hardcore scene of the early twenty-tens. It shows a band sure of its means, able to write songs that are both heavy and sensitive, without ever falling into mere display. This is not an album that gives itself up at first glance, but one that grows with deeper listening, played whole, without distraction. For anyone who loves massive guitars and raw emotion, it offers dense, sincere and durable material, the kind you rediscover across the years. A solid, demanding and endearing record.
