Mahkato - Fighting the Urge to Start Fires - 7

Labels: Init
Review by: Andy Malcolm

We have too many reviews of weird shit going up today so I thought I had better re-dress the balance for readers who are scared of all those other records with some more traditional Collective fare! Mahkoto is an emo band with some melodic tendencies. The songs are nicely varied and don’t get too samey. It starts off with “Pendulum” which has mathy rhythms before settling down into a very melodic chorus that brings to mind Small Brown Bike. Overall their sound is a lot more complex, perhaps even techy compared to SBB, but they go in for gruff shouted vocals at times. There are 4 songs in total on here, the others have a kind of darker atmosphere to Pendulum, much less tuneful. It has cool breathless talky bits that are very emo. “True Story” is a crunchy and powerful track, it reminds of various mid 90’s emo obscurism. I could throw around names like Grain or whatever but you probably don’t care unless you are totally obsessed with that era’s music. And “Burn Again” has a brooding twinkle part that I liked a lot.

Overall this is a good solid 7″, without being downright amazing. I have had it for ages but could never really work out what to write about it. It’s just a 7″ that I like. Oh well!