Labels: self released
Review by: Alex Deller
There was a time when I would try to cajole/persuade/trick fellow CZ writer and SuperFi Records overlord Kunal Nandi into being in a band with me. One of my last great, grand schemes was to be “heavy metal Codeine” … an idea that seemed like it might have legs until Kowloon Walled City dropped ‘Grievances’ and I realised I could never, ever be part of anything even a smidgen as good as that. Irrelevant as this may have seemed thus far, the point is that ANOTHER band has glommed onto my genius idea and is now trying to make hay from it: Daughters Of Saint Crispin. Ironically and yet semi-accurately identifying as ‘Sadflesh’ on their Bandcamp page, the drum machine-powered duo of Pete Leonard and Russell Emerson Hall find themselves at an interesting intersection where the brittle, browbeaten sorrow of Lowercase meets the taut, tendon-wringing rock of The Austerity Program. Angular riffs are spooled endlessly out and droplets of sweat slowly bead, with the pieces coming splendidly together for the EP’s magnificent conclusion … the aching, Idaho-esque ‘Head And Heart’.