Labels: Deep Elm
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Here’s a newbie from Deep Elm, the label that produces the infamous “Emo” Dairies CD’s (so called, because they milk the scene, ha ha). I’m sorry, I don’t mean it really.
Get past the annoying intro (I guess they are just not emo, emo bands don’t do rock intros, they do twinkles) and the first track on here just plain smokes. Imagine if Hot Water Music decided to play fast. That’s how it sounds. Just surefire solid gold hardcore influenced rock with throaty roars, nicely screamed backups, and a fair amount of pace. The vox here are just so much better than the 7″. And it flows seamlessly into track 2 brilliantly. Without a pause. And rather quirkily, they sound a bit like Leatherface here. Really! Anyway, It’s around this point that you’re figuring on this little power packed EP being something rather special. And the same with the hard driving track 3, can’t fault the thing so far, as much as I’d like to! 3 tracks of unbridled, powerful hardcore rock. Alas, things come sliding back down to earth on the dreary “Anthem”. It has neither an interesting enough rhythm, or strong enough spoken vocals, to carry off whatever it’s trying to achieve. I can’t figure it out myself. Things are just about back on track by the time the next song comes a long, though it’s a bit mid-paced, and they have gone back to the shitty vocals of yore.
Save the best for last though – there is a bonus track which is rather rocking. Kinda superfast, screamy, heavy hardcore that is going to confuse the heck out of some kids, and have the more open minded ones rejoicing. Nice one. If they did a whole album like this, then this band would be totally fucking go!
Here’s a final Deep Elm tidbit for ya: Johnny Elm quite happily uses quotes from old positive Collective reviews of Deep Elm releases on his website, but he never asked permission, and he never sent us any freebies to say thanks either. Respect the label for their excellent treatment of bands, *sigh* at it for other reasons.