Review by: Ian Cavell
God knows why I’m going to give this a good review. Bands like Left for Dead usually see me running for cover, my hands cradling my delicate ears, trying to ease the pain of encountering a genre of music that I can’t attach the prefix “melodic” to. Well, Left For Dead, buck this personal trend by creating a full on racket that I can’t help but groove to. Splitting Heads is basically a discography CD; thats 16 tracks from various split releases and another 10 or so live tracks. The live songs are, predictably, fairly redundant; although at least the sound quality is reasonable. [actually I take that all back, the singer just used the phrase “rock out with your cock out” which I think now completely justifies their inclusion].
Ok, so stand out tracks are all pretty much all the songs from the Acrid split; ‘Pliant’ really does rock like a motherfucker and ‘Left for Dead’ is pure fucking evil. And lyrically this record certainly goes for the jugular, a spectacular rallying cry against, well the human race in general (as the guy says on one of the live tracks “this song is called who you know, its basically about how you suck”). Some of these lyrics had me sitting here, silently mouthing “yes, this is so fucking right” like a madman. Couple that with the occasional dark, sludgy guitar riffs and full-on hardcore mayhem the rest of the time and you have a band called Left for Dead. And I fucking love it.