Labels: Hardware
Review by: Alex Deller
Call me an old-fashioned fool, but I still enjoy taking a punt on records and tapes based on description alone. Oftentimes, thanks to the trust I place in the people who sell me the auditory muck I tend towards, this reaps rich dividends and I’m pleasantly surprised by what I’ve handed over my groats for sight unseen. Hardware Records, though, is rapidly becoming a label that makes my heart sink whenever I see their label name or catalogue number on something I’ve picked up. Granted, the Organism LP and Inmates 7″ were solid and that Vaaska 12″ ripped, but Jesus H. Christ I need to spend four quid on a tape like this like I need a hole in the brain (or, on a less dramatic note, to hear another note of music played by a band like Wormeaters ever again). Lumpen, monomaniacal, straightedge hardcore is the order of the day, sounding both kitten weak and so ridiculously furrow-browed that you’d like to think it was all a big silly joke being played at your expense. For the most part it comes across like an even more blank-eyed ‘How Much Art’ being smashed against a weedy, teenage version of ‘No One’, but comparing it in any way, shape or form to the likes of SSD or Integrity is giving it way too much credence considering how watery, staged and stilted it all sounds. Weak, basically, when stuff like this really shouldn’t be.