Labels: Clue #2
Review by: Gareth L
Two Canadian screamo(ish) bands. Mahria from Edmonton first. It’s always refreshing to hear some female influence on a band like this and the thing that really grabs me are those desperate shrieked vocals, which work super well with the driving music, almost hardcore punk-esque at times. The breakdown in ‘Fault’, as the instruments drop and things get twinkly and mega sad is just killer, Andy Maddox would be proud. This release is a couple of years old now and Mahria have since split up but apparently they have a posthumous LP coming out which I will certainly look into, you should too.
Watcher are from BC and their style is more akin to Reversal of Man, Combat Wounded Veteran and those kind of nasty emo-violence bands, song titles as long as the songs themselves kind of thing. It’s not a style that I was ever fully into, but what I do like about them is that if you listen hard enough you can hear a healthy (probably a weird word to use here) sludge influence, especially vocally but in the guitar sound too, the end of ‘I May Be a Chump, but Chumps Change’ sounding particularly Eyehategod-ish. Not something you hear mixed with screamo too often, but something that works well here.