Labels: Superfluous
Review by: Oli Saunders
One of the greatest things about being a music fan is when you stumble across something completely unexpectedly that blows you away. You then play the music over and over, perhaps shaking your head in disbelief at just how fucking good it is. It’s a great feeling that I don’t find in many other areas in life. Now before I get carried away any further, that hasn’t quite happened here, but this record has certainly made my weekend. I found out about it a month or so ago back when looking through Superfluous’ list of releases. It sounded decent from the one song preview I heard so I thought I’d give it a try. Now giving it a proper listen without massive expectations this afternoon I am enjoying it a huge amount.
Back to the calm and collected review that attempts to be objective, you have probably heard bands like The Rebarker before. They certainly exist. The band themselves compare their music to hardcore such as The Swarm and Chokehold. I don’t actually remember what these bands sound like I have to admit! Maybe they are much better, I’ll look into it. For me there is a bit of screamo vibe going on; a little bit in the guitars maybe, which race about all over the place with lots of distortion. And particularly the vocals, which are unmistakenly German in sound. Think Enfold or Linsay, but it’s all a bit faster and punkier than that Bremen hardcore sound. Maybe Francis Brady but with less high pitched vocals? The drumming is pretty damn pummelling most of the time too. If only I could remember what The Swarm and Chokehold sound like this review mgiht be easier. Overall it looks like there are a lot of influences that have shaped this music, but at the end of the day it is simply good old raging hardcore.
There’s a nice audio sample to start things off and then BAM! A nine minute onslaught of screams and instruments. ‘Old Choir’ is the first track and I am all over this, probably one of the best on the 7”. The rest are similar in quality, however, and there is little time given to letting up. The final track ‘Whats Left To Do?!’ ends things brilliantly, it goes instrumental in the middle before climaxing with awesome riffs and screams. 250 copies pressed, I think this could appeal to a lot of people into German hardcore. One final thing is the lyrics booklet which is great: comic book panels have been taken and the lyrics have replaced where the speech once was. Simple but pretty damn cool. Pretty surreal too when there’s a cartoon of Batman and Robin exchanging cryptic lyrics about consciousness dying. Good stuff.
5th December 2009