Labels: Electric Human Project
Review by: Emile Bojeson
With this sensational bands recent demise “Bring Out Your Dead’ is not an album of new songs but rather a compilation of hard to get hold of early material that was released solely on vinyl. This being the case it is clearly excusable that the songs do not quite flow in a completely aesthetically pleasing order, not least due to two of the songs being recorded almost a year before the other six. A few of the songs on this release have in fact been re-recorded in, albeit slightly different, incarnations on the bands full length, “To Bring Our Own End’.
It is obviously mainly the music we should be interested in, however, with a release like this I feel it is essential to make known facts which will definitely affect the way the record will be listened to. The music itself shows influence of such luminaries as One Eyed God Prophecy, Saetia and Reversal of Man as well as their contemporaries, Neil Perry and Orchid. They produce a sound that I would call late 90’s emo violence, the sound of mid 90’s emo with a sudden revelation to play much harder, faster and scream even more! This sound has in fact been compared to grindcore and although for the most part I view this as a slightly uninformed point of view, the last few songs on this CD may in fact prove that these people have a point.
Joshua Fit For Battle like to lull you in with melodies and then proceed to tear you apart not least on track 5 (“2:52′) where the intro guitar might not be completely out of place on a Dawsons Creek soundtrack. Obviously the next part to the song would probably be the soundtrack to the whole cast of said TV show being massacred with sharp knives.
I played this album to my two and a half year old niece and they are actually her favourite band now, she used to ask for “Nana music’, now she says, “Uncle meal, Uncle meal”¦.Josha!’. When the quiet guitar bits come up she puts her head on the table and whispers, “sleepy time’ but when the violence kicks in she starts screaming her head off and flailing around like a two year old (oh”¦.wait). I have to agree with her that, although this is an understandably scattered record, “Bring Out Your Dead’ is fantastic epilogue to the outstanding story that was Joshua Fit For Battle.