Review by: Joe Caithness
Woah nelly! After listening to this I had to take a minutes refrain from the screamo destruction! This really did tear my face off… Recently coming back off a mini tour, one of the bands we played with being Louise Cyphre I thought “fuck it!” took all the money out of my distro box and bought everything the bands had on them, and so far every record has blown me away.
Right, so Louise are up first, if you don’t know their sound I will try to describe it to you… if you put an Orchid or Reversal of Man lp into sound editing software (Cool Edit etc…), then take five seconds of each song at a random point, then paste those selections into another song at random parts, cut it down to 50 seconds long and you have a LC song. It’s probably the most Spazztic© screamo/emo style hardcore I have ever heard. It’s kind of difficult to appreciate live 5 nights on the trot but on record I really like this band. If you’re bored of emo bands using the same rhythms and structures, buy a record by this band.
The Shikari side… can I get an “OMG!”? There is only one word to describe this six or so minutes of music and that is: absolutely fucking raging. Shikari are (were) the kings of punishingly epic hardcore, and these nine inches take that one step further into the brutality. The first song starts of with a big Uranus-esque intro which suddenly hits into a totally raging d-beat attack which is nicely complemented by a wall of octave chords and squealing, the record pretty much does this but faster for a few minutes and ends.
If you are into your punishing/brutal hardcore then buy this, but make sure you are sitting comfortably first.