Another day late/dollar short review from me, but since this release seemingly came out of nowhere and features the two Tiny Hawks dudes +1 I figure I should get a pass. While you can definitely trace the band’s lineage given their ramshackle, tumbledown nature things are far more aggro from the off, ‘Industrial Trust’ mixing frayed tunefulness with ominous blarting noises and ‘Crown’ starting with some prettyish guitarwork before breaking into thumping chords that sound like trashcans being beaten with baseball bats. It’s more like hard work, basically, and you have to worry about what awful things might have happened to these people between 2006’s ‘People Without End’ and now given how pissed, grumbly and gripe-fuelled their songs are, the music stubborn and peppered with the kind of hardscrabble melodies that leave thorns in your hands when you’re finally able to cling to one. It’s still great, of course, but the mathiness now makes your brain itch and they seem more likely to stick a twig in your eye than spot you a cup of coffee. Heck, though, life’s liable to do that to the best of us and they’ve at least set their troubles to some pretty formidable music: check it out if you like your math-rock heavy, scrape-packed and sulkily antisocial.
