Labels: Disposable Culture – Internationale – parade of spectres
Review by: Danny Parsons
What the hell are things that you used to get in school called where you have the folded piece of paper and you pick a colour and a number and it turns out you want to marry your dad or something? Well this has one of those but with lyrics. Answers on a postcard as to what those things are actually called. Pretty neat gimmick though. Neat enough for me to start off this review with.
I’ve quite liked M&G for a while now. Emphasis on the “quite’ though. I thought the demo cdr was okay; I thought the split with Grave, Shovel”¦Let’s Go! was better. This 10″ however is exceptional and exactly what UK emo/screamo bands need to be doing. Their sound is kinda reminiscent of Kaddish but then again I’m not sure which band was about first so it might be the other way round. Either way, they sound quite similar. I swear, of all the tracks on this 10″ the very first song has me tapping my emo feet the most. “Disillusion’ starts off with a jangly bass line and the instruments then layer up gradually “” lots of snare rolls and the like. Really catchy stuff. The vocals come in and I must say, they’re a lot lower in the mix than I thought they would be. This worked for a whole plethora of bands in the 90s though so it’s a sound that I can get on with quite well. The drums have got a real urgency about them all the way through the disc like on this song but it’s not slap-dash “” it’s done with real precision and this, I like.
There’s plenty of guitar noodling all the way through too, with quite tech moments dotted around here and there. There’s a nice build-up in ‘Untitled’ which everyone should like. I’m running out of things to say about this release already but not because it’s bad, but because I don’t want to do a run-through of how good every song is. Everyone should buy this and find out for themselves. It has restored any waning faith I might have had in the UK screamo scene. It takes all the best parts of the genre (dual vocals, yelping, twinkles, build-ups, chaos et cetera) and without overdoing any one of them, manages to construct a solid piece of screamo that should stand the test of time.
As I’ve already stated, one of my favourite moments on this release is the first track. “Goliath and I’ (it’s a joke. Geddit?) is super-emotional and also a stand-out track. And the last track too. Fudge it, all of them are excellent. The artwork’s really cool too, a couple of inserts n’ that. Nice. I’m now going to listen to it again whilst eating my stir-fry for tea.