Labels: Hawthorne Street
Review by: Kunal Nandi
Come on, feel the girth of this thing. Feel the weight! You know you want to.
Four songs in 45 minutes? The stats alone make you wonder what’s up with (some of) the (metal) kids these days. Perhaps it’s some perverse direct reaction to the current wave of overtly technical rapid-fire heart-attack hardcore that’s engulfing us all, resulting in a more patient breed of
headbanger, preferring, as they do, to wallow in the reverberating thrum of an echoing power-chord rather than speed off at a million m.p.h. onto the next riff before their lungs collapse. Perhaps pot is too readily available. Perhaps it’s both. Regardless, this is some supremely epic noisecore you’d be a fool to miss out on.
The long songs are LONG, usually topping out at twelve minutes or so, and it’s a lot to take in at first. They never get dull though, with the band smoothly shifting between sections when the mood seems right. They’re not simply a bunch of shorter songs smushed together either – these are pieces
in their own right, where every movement is essential. Having said that, my personal favourite track is the relatively short (at about five minutes) “To Anacreon, In Heaven” which acts like the perfect soundbite for the entire record, distilling everything down to a precious few hundred seconds. Crashing cymbals and powerchords introduce you to things, before swinging into the best dirge of a riff I have heard for a long time, before leaping into some wired and weird guitar acrobatics. The masterstroke comes with the closing section where it grinds to a slow syncopated beat, before grinding
to an even slower beat, letting things ring out against your suffering eardrums. Tortured howling accompanies all this of course. The longer songs dwell on the build-up more, much like Envy or Mogwai would do, before letting loose with a Neurosis-style freak-out.
It should be noted that controversy has followed this band around. The recent arrest of one member for theft seems to have put paid to any chances of future activity from the band, which is fair enough I guess. Scene Police Records opted not to release the vinyl version of this album after citing
their lyrics from previous records as being violent towards women. Judging by the booklet that accompanies this record, that is definitely NOT the case. Failed relationships are perhaps obliquely referred to more often than your average hardcore band would usually, but that just adds to the
emotional impact, and there’s certainly no misogynistic anecdotes or overtones. Bottom line – this is ethically sound.