Labels: Slave Union – Sons Of Vesta – Tumorati Di Dio
Review by: Oli Saunders
This came out last year in time for Violent Breakfast’s UK tour with Me And Goliath. After finding some of the band’s earlier work a bit average (but still enjoyable) I really rated their 2007 album ‘Nient’altro Che Tempo’. So I made sure to go see them on that tour despite having to travel quite far to Leeds and having already seen them a few times in 2006 (before the LP that I really rate had come out). I’m really glad I did because they were so good that night (playing a house show at the sadly now defunct Turnbuckle House) and have subsequently split up. I only found out about their break up quite recently actually, it turns out that this split was their last release, with two other songs having been recorded but that will remain unreleased. They can be downloaded though, one is an epic but awesome ten minute song entitled ‘Ancore, Porti E Naufraghi’ and the other is a cover of the Bauhaus song ‘Silent Hedges’. Manuel from Shove records has told me that members have gone on to form Chambers, who play screamo and will have an album out relatively soon I believe. So hopefully this will be good and is something to look forward to.
Violent Breakfast’s songs on this record remind me greatly of the LP. It is an evolved style compared to their earlier work (including a demo, split with Laghetto and a 4 way split). Some of that was really great, some not so good. I prefer the new style – it sits somewhere in the midst of the many European screamo bands but stands out to a reasonable extent. Great melodic instruments than spiral around to create the perfect background for half shouted, half screamed vocals. Not overly harsh but harsh enough. Gone for the most part are the keyboards that the vocalist used to play, though they do make a fleeting apperance and the end of the second song. I can’t rememeber if he plays them on the LP. It is just a nice change of scenery from that initial sound they had and the group seem to have grown and gelled over time and finally nailed what they wanted to play. If you like the songs on the LP you will like this, simple as that. It’s nothing very different but for me it doesn’t need to be.
Pyramids (note: different band to the one on Hydrahead) are a stange band for me. Not that they play strange music, it’s just that I appear to go through phases of liking and dislking them and also long periods of not even listening to them. But this is unfair as they are really good – well today anyway and I think I’ll stick with that opinion from now on. I think the songs on this split sound similar to their previous two albums. It reminds me of Storm The Bastille a bit, that’s possibly misleading though, it’s less chaotic and there is usually just one vocalist. Perhaps the band it sounds the most like is later Funeral Diner, such as on their ‘Doors Open’ LP. Overall it’s really solid too and the split as a whole is well worth picking up.
27th September 2009