Labels: Troubleman
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Now, I am not quite sure what happened with this band. They put out a number of 7″ releases (most of which are super hard to find), and then I think they split up. Blood of the Young issued a 10″ compiling all those previous releases. And then the band got back together. Which was rather a surprise, but a very welcome one at that. So here is their latest outing, a ‘full length’ (at 22 minutes) on Troubleman.
If you’ve heard any of SOZ’s previous stuff (get the 10″ if you haven’t!!!) then you’ll be familiar with a band that played screamo in a different fashion to most of the bands doing the style these days. And they’ve taken a further step to diversify their sound on this album, throwing a keyboard into the mix. Whilst they aren’t doing anything too far out with the keyboards (often using repetetive sounds set to play in the stlye of a church organ), they aren’t ripping off the Locust either. Musically it’s a spazzo-screamo fest, lots of flailing and yelling and dancing to be done here. Imagine mixing Angel Hair and some Blood Brothers, and you’ll be heading in the right direction. Crunching hardcore riffs do battle with off-kilter rhythms and screamo insanity, yo.
I also understood that they used a drum machine now instead of a drummer? I couldn’t tell by listening to this. The whole sound they have now is perhaps a little too clinical and precise (certainly much more than they used to be), but I would hazard a guess that most people listening wouldn’t pick out that they had programmed the drum beats. Or maybe they hadn’t, and it was just a weird internet rumour I read somewhere. Hmm. And my biggest complaint about this record was that the vinyl didn’t come out till much after the CD, and I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to get this so I had to pick up the digital version. Sucks to be me.
Well, I wouldn’t say that this was quite as good as the 10″, but at least they are actually trying out some new sounds and not sticking to the tried and tested formula. This album will appeal to the spock-rocker in you.