Labels: Engineer
Review by: Tom Hughes
A couple o’ emerging UK hardcore names here getting all splitty. Nice. Urot weigh in straight away with a big old screamy metal noise that hints at a bit of Racebannon deluge of messiness at first, but levels out into a much more coherent, straighter thing, and by the first chorus they’re bringing in some ace little melodic flashes and a clear predilection for The Hook – in guitar rather than vocal terms I might add, for the yeller remains at an admirably up-n-at-’em cookie-monster-with-a-bit-of-Bon-Scott level throughout. Elsewhere they get into some lush, ringing, almost-emo janglings before welding a big power-metal chug to a big old monolithic bastard of a chord sequence, and even hint at a bit of old-school LA Adolescents-style singalong in their last song here. Gripes? I’d say it sounds a little too cleanly-recorded if anything, I reckon they’d suit a nice bit of splurgey filth, so they would. Nevertheless, not arf bad whatsoever pal.
WIJ are hard to pin down… they also have that clean sound but seem to suit it better, remaining for the most part in sharp, quick riff-attack mode. One minute they sound like Imbalance (the vocals in partic), next they lay on the Converge-y metal thump, then there’ll be shades of Gorilla Biscuits/Turning Point style posi action. Later they slow down some and break out the surging minor chords, almost approaching something like Ensign doing Indian Summer… which sounds very wrong on paper, or er, in pixels or whatever, but less so on little plastic disc. Third song is the most overtly melodic, a screamier version of Avail perhaps, and features some hefty fucking breakdown action. Altogether nothing you could say you’d never heard the like of, but in places it got me going like a lot of those old bands did first time round. Smart! Both playing out and about around the land, no doubt.