Labels: Ed Walters Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Solid split record from these two bands, the first in a selection of records that I recently ordered that are all horribly warped. Luckily, this one plays without bother. The rest are all being crushed back into shape, fingers crossed.
Anyways, let’s deal with Sutek. These are some friendly kids (3 of them sent me e-mails after I posted something in their guestbook about getting hold of records) and they are doing some good stuff with the screamy hardcore genre, giving their own take on that style over the 3 tracks present. They play some pretty fast and thrashed out stuff, which is actually making me think of a screamo version of the Swarm to be honest! They mosh things up with some excellent metallic riffage, particularly on “Little Boxes, Empty Heads”, the best track on here. Gotta love that thick bass crunch that permeates this track. And “Burning Skies” has some inspired melodic metal guitar lines running rife throughout the chaos! Nice one!
Murdock are a band I haven’t really encountered before. They are pretty close to being excellent. “Tainted” is full of that driving discordance and chaos you get from Mike Kirsch bands, in particular John Henry West and Torches to Rome. The guitar sound is very similar to those bands, and very full on. Vocally they go for the strained yells and screams. It works well. Except things tend to fall down a bit when they slow down the pace and become a bit too chugging for my ears, especially as “Peace Off” is like that the whole way. When they rage out of control on the other track though, they rock hard.
All in all, a decent record here that might be worth your while.