Tentacles - Tentacles - Tape (2010)

Labels: React With Protest
Review by: Oli Saunders

I know I’ve raved about two new releases that fall loosely under screamo in the last couple of days but here’s one more. React With Protest tend to know what they are talking about and this is a great find – I presume not a great deal of people outside the states know about these guys. Tentacles play very intense screamo that falls somewhere between Orlacs Hände, Storm The Bastille, and maybe even bands like Hybris a little bit. This tape is a collection of two earlier releases, one from 2008 and the other from this year – supposedly released on tape, CD and vinyl but probably never making it across from the US. Fourty minutes of this lo-fi jarring chaos in tape form is very much a bargain as far as I’m concerned.

I can’t tell how old these dudes are; some of the lyrics make me think they are young but the sound also seems quite mature in such that it appears they know what they are doing. There are some well crafted songs over six minutes long that don’t really follow the traditional formula and are all the better for it. This is the best introduction to a band of this type that I’ve had in a while; it’s particularly nice that they are from the US which has such great genre history but no longer punches above its weight. If you like noisy but melodic chaos recorded in a bin then get this.

2nd November 2010