Labels: Discos Huelga
Review by: Danny Parsons
It seems like it’s been for-flippin’-ever since Last City was released (even though it was just last year) and I couldn’t get my paypalling mitts on this pre-order quick enough. I’d like to stress at the very beginning of this review that Loma Prieta are currently all I listen to (not the old stuff mind) but for the sake of a review I guess I’ll try and keep an objective standpoint. Basically, this album isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn close; more on the cons later though.
In comparison to the epic Last City, this release is a lot tamer in many respects; the first track, Exit Here kicks off the album with some twinkly delayed guitar fiddlery, but that’s all soon over when the rest of the instruments kick in. A nice slow beat with overlapping vocals soon enough propels into chaos and as always, the drumming really shines through (for the rest of the album too mind); it all gets a bit chuggy at the end which leads perfectly into the next track “” Vermillion River “” which is a bit more “punky’ and straight-forward as far as their other material is concerned. This really is an album that you should listen to from start to finish since it’s so short (fifteen minutes!) and because the songs interlink so well it’s hard to pick stand-out sections “” I’ll give it a bash though!
For me, the highlights are Carelessnessness, Ghost Shadow and Punxx’nup (they’re played in that order on the album). Carelessnessness leads into Ghost Shadow with a nice bit of sad acoustic guitar and probably isn’t what you’d expect from Loma given the nature of the rest of the album (a side note “” I found that this section sounded especially good on vinyl for some reason). The guitars and vocals in Ghost Shadow lean more towards emo than their traditional screamo/post-hardcore sound which is all good in my books. Punxx’nup is more paced than the previously mentioned songs, is just over a minute long and is one of the most impressive screamo songs that I’ve heard in a long while. Probably the roughest vocals on the whole album; the singer witters on about how they’ve “got a problem, controlling the ocean”. Coooooool! There actually seems to be a bit of a theme going on in the lyrics to do with the sea and whatnot; probably have to ask them more about that though. I should probably note that the songs on this album are pretty short and the guys are packing in a hell of a lot of lyrics, fancy time changes and whatnot. Basically, there’s a hell of a lot going on (it’s all good though).
Okay, so on to the bits that I’m not so convinced about (there aren’t many really).
1) The trajectory of this album is somewhat questionable I guess; I always look forward to listening to the beginning and ending of an album so I was slightly confounded upon receiving the album to find that the two tracks posted as “tasters’ on the band’s website are indeed the first and last tracks of the album. All a bit odd if you ask me. Not a problem if you’ve just got the album and haven’t been rinsing their MySpace for the past two or three months!
2) There’s a lot more “singing’ than on their previous releases and this is most prevalent in Ghost Shadow, Arc and Surrounding. I’d say that it really works in Ghost Shadow since there’s plenty of shouting and whatnot going on in the background, likewise in Surrounding (although perhaps to a slightly lesser extent). In Arc though, there’s what weirdly sounds like humming over the top of everything else and that fact, coupled with the lyrics – which are a real disappointment compared to the rest (sorry guys!) “” mark this as the most cumbersome song on the album. In all fairness though, you’d find worse songs of this style out there “” I’m only picking out Arc since it seems like a dip in an otherwise great collection of songs.
3) It’s like fifteen minutes long! This album really shouldn’t end; I would have been happy with another four songs or more at least “” before my first break at work I had listened to this about seven or eight times!
The packaging for the vinyl’s super-fly “” a big painting of the album’s namesake; pretty rad. There’s a neat gimmick going on with the lyrics too; they’re all in a jumble and you have to use provided tracing paper with the song’s names on to decipher it. NICE. Overall then, a solid album and probably slightly more accessible than Last City “” certainly in terms of vocals. I really couldn’t say whether it’s better or not though; I’m quite torn about that. You can decide I guess. Regardless, this has to be one of the best screamo/hardcore etc releases so far this year. Good effort guys! I better prep myself for the upcoming L’Antietam split!