Time, The Valuator Takes The Listener For A Thrilling Joyride On ‘How Fleeting, How Fragile’

Imagination sits among the only limits to human existence (outside of the basic scientific laws) – we’ve proved as much in the modern world. Just look around. Human civilization is rushing forward by leaps and bounds, as people find themselves empowered to dump past restrictions and march right on into our technological wonderland/horror story. Time, The Valuator’s music matches up to these developments, providing the listener with an immersive, complex experience that pushes out the boundaries of alternative heavy music all sorts of directions. Music as a reflection of its creators’ and their worlds is more than a cliche — Time, The Valuator proves that with their 2018 full length How Fleeting, How Fragile, out now on Famined Records.

Time, The Valuator: No Limits

The band intentionally reached out with their music, intending to hitch it to the careening but strikingly beautiful (metaphorical) train carrying humanity.

‘We had a vision for this project since the very beginning: There are no limits,” the band’s vocalist Phil Bayer explains. “It doesn’t matter if someone likes it or not, we’re not here to please everyone’s taste in music. We’re here because this is what we love doing. The album is basically a snapshot of our personalities. There’s nothing wrong with writing catchy tunes that follow a clear pattern and we wouldn’t dream of judging anyone for their approach of songwriting, as we feel that music has the purpose of letting people experience freedom. I just think our music is a little like watching a movie — there are different layers of emotion to it.”

The band mixes an absolutely glimmering array of emotions into their music, including driving intensity, quiet meditation and a whole shade of variants in between. There’s a contrast between Bayer’s mostly clean vocals and the grinding guitars and pummeling drums that provides a baseline of texture for the music. On top of that foundation, the band dabbles in everything from (good) rap metal to artsy technical playing.

How Fleeting, How Fragile Earns Attention

The best movies — to carry on with Bayer’s metaphor — attach themselves to some familiar plot line from our real life complex existences, and in the same way, Time, The Valuator’s touching implications are nearly inescapable. They imbue their music with enough intensity to ensure as much.

The band attended to every detail of their music and ensured that the life defining vigor was included. “If I had to choose one headline for it,” Bayer explains, “I’d say the story of How Fleeting, How Fragile tells of someone that is realizing how precious life is and how easy it can be to lose everything you love. Time (as a physical power) is a reminder of death. Sounds grim, but at the end of the day you only learn to cherish what life has to offer.”

Time, The Valuator sounds as though they’re trying to help the listener achieve that aim, providing a synthesized but diverse musical buffet.

An Exhilarating Finished Creation

Through it all, the band ties their ideals about taking music as far as it can go — and taking their expression of the human experience along for the ride — to something that listeners really can enjoy. The music hardly gets lost under its own weight. The band’s sense of melody and experimentation is now able to be enjoyed more broadly publicly because of the release of their debut album — which Bayer says feels “indescribable.”

“We have worked on this material for so long — it felt as if we wouldn’t ever pass the finish line. It’s unreal,” he continues. “I’m proud to say that we got there eventually, even though we were time limited due to us not working on this project full time. To keep our writing routine simple: We wrote something, declared it as too weak, dug it up again to figure out where we wanted the song to go. As you can imagine, this can be really stressful. Sometimes you’re juggling with self doubt, the other moment you feel empowered, like you could achieve anything.”

“I imagine that wine making could be similar to this,” he quips. Both processes certainly end with a finely tuned product to savor.

Listen to How Fleeting, How Fragile on Spotify below.