Labels: Playground Politics – Russian Folk Stories – Sticky Translucent Goo
Review by: Oli Saunders
Why oh why did I not rate this band before? I guess I wrote them off for whatever reason when I heard their previous output. But now I sit here playing this 10” and feeling foolish. Put out on two UK labels that I really like and Playground Politics who I have not heard of, this is seriously awesome.
Holy fuck is the first song raging, it builds up in teasing fashion before unleashing a monstrosity of screams. Dual vocals of desperation, flailing guitars. Everything you can possibly want if you like this sort of thing. Things don’t change much throughout the rest of the first side, nor the second to be fair, but I don’t particularly want them to. It’s not your typical screamo sound, there is a lot going an at once. I think the dual vocals work really well. The guitars are crushing at times, grabbing hold of the song and upping the intesity, before returning to the background. Described by others as a cross between Joshua Fit For Battle and Jerome’s Dream, I don’t really agree with this but it’s a decent reference for the kind of sound you should expect.
The insert is really cool, strange images drawn on tracing paper inserted between lyrics which don’t make that much sense to me. I am now really looking forward to hearing the band’s split with In First Person – that’s been out for a while now, I need to go buy it!
Final note: I felt pretty crap this evening but listening to this and the Marked Men has seriously cheered me up. Yeh!
20th January 2009