One of Seattle's most interesting bands of the past decade, The Sleepy Eyes of Death, called it quits on Friday, August 26th. They played their farewell show, ending on an especially amicable note, at Neumos in Capitol Hill along with Flexions and Crypts. The Sleepy Eyes rocked a packed house with as much energy, innovation and love for their fans as they've had since they first hit the scene six years ago.

For the uninitiated, The Sleepy Eyes of Death were Joel Harmon, Cassidy Gonzales, Keith Negley and Andrew Toms. They played an especially complex version of post rock, a style characterized by its minimal vocals, high emotion and incredible loudness. SEOD always went all-out in both the volume and technical departments, leading to some complications in their live shows. They usually pumped out enough decibels and fog to break their own machines or set off fire alarms. At the farewell show, the band only managed to get through the opening number before a major technical problem struck. Tyler Swan, the very talented percussionist from Flexions, saved the day with his wire expertise and the show went on.

I first caught The Sleepy Eyes of Death at the very same venue two years ago at the 2009 Capitol Hill Block Party when I was covering the event for a now-defunct music magazine. The band only got sharper with time, but they were already very good back on that especially hot summer day. Though fans can still pick up their three albums, the debut LP Street Lights for a Ribcage, the Dark Signals EP and their final release Towards a Damaged Horizon, the recordings can't really capture the live show experience. At its best, post rock sounds like a choir of angels screaming bloody murder during a carpet-bombing exercise. Every thump of the bass should feel like a grenade against your chest and the wailing guitars ought to be nothing less than a Venusian atmosphere of sound weighing down on the room. Standing just a few feet away from the Sleepy Eyes (which I remain convinced was the best way to see them), the thick audience and I got that unique experience at Neumos. When I'm old, I'll tell my grandkids that I at least went deaf listening to something new.

The opening band, Crypts, is an odd duck. The last third of their set was interesting, featuring songs that found a balance between the dark dissonance the band favors and the wild electronic elements that elevate their ideas. The rest sounded like a band basing their entire sound on the climactic moment in Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy", all distorted screams and ear-shattering beats. Flexions can also be called odd, but in a more endearing way. They play a kind of rock that's like if the desert had a kid with a tropical island. They're a house band in a David Lynch movie, in a good way.

The headliners rightly took the show, though. The Sleepy Eyes played perfect renditions of their most popular and well constructed songs, thanking their fans along the way and showing their appreciation for one another as friends and musicians. The boys aren't disappearing from the music world, they're just putting this particular project to bed. The Sleepy Eyes of Death will be missed.