Despite its twenty-five year history in America, hardcore remains a genre that most people grow out of at one point or another; even the scene’s iconic figurehead Ian Mackaye has recently toned down the ferocity in favor of dour pop-rock stylings. While the members of Across Tundras are veterans of the fertile Sioux Falls, SD hardcore scene, they’ve made a major stylistic transition on their first full-length, leaving the willow-tipped screaming and trainwreck guitars behind in favor of monolithic compositions that swirl elements of shoegaze, post-rock and doom metal into their woozy headspace.

True to its name, Dark Songs of the Prairie is a sprawling post-hardcore take on the wasted landscapes, bloodthirsty bandits and weeping skies of Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. “If God Cuts You Down” and “Cosmic Retribution” unfurl like the audio equivalents of a Cormac McCarthy novel, their manic thrush of windswept guitars and galloping cadence emanating the same boozesick nonchalance as the deplorable characters that rule his apocalyptic desert underworld. However, not everything here ascends to such grandiose heights, and for every shining example of the redemptive power of the riff like “Dark Flower of the Prairie,” there are plodding sludgefests like “Western Wind” and “The Old Sexton” that seem lackluster in execution, as well as devoid of inspiration or purpose. The chops are there, as is the songwriting, but it has yet to congeal into the kind of epic power that can catapult Across Tundras to the next level.

Though not an epic debut in the vein of Electra 2000 or Celestial, Dark Songs of the Prairie is far from a wasted effort, as it has set a solid template upon which the young band can now build and modify. While it showcases the myriad talents Across Tundras possesses, its ultimate undoing comes at the hands of its lack of focus, and while it may seem fastidious to condemn a band for being too determined, especially in an era where so many bands are doing as little as possible to keep up with the pack, the fact remains that sheer blind ambition does not a true classic make. – Jason Jackowiak (2006, The Daily Copper)