Labels: Utarid
Review by: Oli Saunders
After reviewing the Zainichi demo I return to the familiar world of Malaysian screamo. Nice instrumental intro to the tape, I wasn’t expecting that. Ah track two, that’s more like it – screamed vocals in time with the guitars which jump all over the place. It’s all over pretty quickly and on to the next song. Short bursts of chaos, not the cleanest recording but there’s nothing wrong with this as it gives it more of a live feel. All five songs with vocals kind of blur into one distorted mess but, again, what’s wrong with that. The lyrics / song meanings are nice too, the last song is about not worrying too much about the future and to be positive about achieving the goals that are important to you.
Overall, a solid demo, you’ll probably only think it’s worth listening to though if you are as obsessed with screamo as me. I don’t mean that in a bad way but Virginia On Duty are very much like all the other Malaysian screamo that are about. They have a name that makes no sense, they like to play barre chords as quickly as possible whilst the vocalist shrieks away in time to all this and the bassist and drummer try to keep up. I love it and could listen to it all day but judging by opinions on contemporary screamo not a lot of other people will.
18th April 2009