Labels: In At the Deep End
Review by: Alex Deller
Seems the average punk’s view of metal has been pretty radically altered the last few years. So much has been either Converge/Dillinger-inspired noisiness or stupid bull-necked thuggery that the ballpark has been blown wide apart. Bait have elements of both metal and hardcore to their sound, and while I can imagine Hydrahead fans digging this, it’s not really in the same realm. Simply put: it isn’t fiddly enough. These guys are clearly no slouches when it comes to playing their instruments, it’s just that there appear to be no attempts to bite John Coltrane’s wayward parping or fling barely-concealed Eddie Van Halen worship into the mix, just plain ol’ metal riffs that could be the very dictionary description of the word ‘buzzsaw’ and biting, snarled vocals wrapped in pages torn from a serial killer’s scrapbook.
It’s a pretty simple formula, but this makes it a little harder to describe when my lazy kiester has become so used to comparing this band to Botch and that one to Isis. There’s something in here that makes me think of what Iconoclast (the Ebullition one) might be like if they were a metal band, or if Withdrawn toned down their Slayerisms a notch. That’s a kind of piecemeal breakdown, but hopefully it’ll give you some kind of insight into where Bait are coming from. It’s raw, base-level and they probably won’t be winning any gold stars for what they’re doing, but it’s a solid, savage noise and refreshingly devoid of the wanton wankiness and homogenized insanity that bogs down nine out of ten metal-influenced hardcore bands nowadays.