The Catalyst - Marianas Trench + 9 - CD (2008)

Labels: perpetual motion machine
Review by: Kunal Nandi

I expected screamo and got abrasive scum-rock, so that’s a big fat tick right there. In fact, it’s a bit of the former and a lot of the latter, what with the Karp / Jesus Lizard / Unsane worship in the mix with those offbeat screamo rhythmics and vocals. The songs here are collected from a number of separate releases, so the variability in production jobs doesn’t help the bittiness of some tracks, what with some of the constructions merely feeling like some riffs (albeit very neat ones) jammed together. Lyrics are in firmly in the oblique nonsense camp, but they trip off the tongue nicely and match the nastiness of the rawk. This is good stuff, and it will be interesting to see what they do next.