Far Apart is a band that didn’t want to succeed. They formed in 1995 in Luleå, Sweden
and got their name from The Cure song called Apart. Their sound is almost a mixture of MCR
and Fugazi. They released an EP with three songs and essentially dropped off the face of the earth.
One of the songs being probably the best crappy-garage-emo song ever written.
Hazel, their only EP, containing a track of the same title, Dartmouth and Overdriver are
the only three songs on Spotify. You have to do some deep research on youtube and Reddit to find
anything else they’ve made. The Hazel EP was released
in ‘98 but only just made it onto Spotify last year.
Far Apart lived by very traditional punk rock
values. After the release of Hazel in the US, major label
offers came rolling in from every direction. But they
declined all of them instantly. Hazel was released by a
Swedish independent label called Carcrash records.
Afterwards, They befriended another European emo
band called The John Doe Band. They independently
released and toured for their dual EP with two songs by
John Doe Band and one by Far Apart. This EP is not on
Spotify or any other streaming platforms; but you can
find it on YouTube. After the tour, they scheduled a new
album to come out but they went separate ways in 1999
before the release.
Contrary to the attention that they got, Far Apart’s songwriting is genius. Hazel’s three songs
are all masterpieces. First of all, the third song is called Overdriver. Far Apart’s lyrics; I’ve
noticed, are pretty subtle, and require a few listens and you have to read the lyrics carefully to
really grasp the song. Overdriver seems to me to be about making a mistake that pushed away a
loved one. With lyrics like “It’s time to collect what I left behind, I wish I could just press
rewind,” show that Mats Omalm is regretting something that he did. Other lines in this song
show off the band’s incredible songwriting ability. Such as, “For a second I thought I was in
charge, but I’m just an ant trying to bark.”
The self-titled track of this EP: Hazel. This song should seriously have some sort of
award or something, like it is actually insane. This song is one of the most underrated songs ever
written. I found this track a year or two ago before it was on Spotify, and kind of forgot about it
because I had no way of listening to it regularly. Out of the blue one day I thought I’d look again
for it, and was very excited to see the EP on Spotify. I’ve shown this song to a few people, and
everyone I’ve shown it to loved it just the same. The track starts off with huge sounding power
chords and hammering drums. The vocals on all of their songs are pretty quiet in the mix, with
the guitar kind of drowning out the singer. But it all adds to the track perfectly, making the
instrumental sound absolutely massive. And the lyrics on this song are so sincere. The chorus
goes “ I change my outfit everyday, I say those things that I think you would like to hear me say,
I do things I normally wouldn’t do just to make you let me spend a while with you, Silly silly

silly silly me.” This song is a typical song about being a boy that likes a girl but doesn’t know if
the girl likes him back, but executed probably better than anyone has ever done. This song’s
instrumentation and vocals, and just every single thing about this song is perfect.
All in all, Far Apart is a band that flew under the radar simply because they had no desire
of being famous, which is honestly kind of legendary. This EP is an 11/10. This band is just four
random European kids that lived a regular life and just so happened to make the best emo music
in existence.