Labels: Fountain City
Review by: Alex Deller
Odd and not entirely effective debut from these Kansas heavyweights, who mix the plunging, low-end metalcore of Earthmover or Blistered with dissonant noise-rock. While this has the potential to be pretty frickin’ great – after all, who wouldn’t want to hear Disembodied thrusting rudely up against Unsane?! – 34 aren’t quite there yet due to an overreliance on simpleton riffing and rote vocal cadences. At worst things sound like Downset lite (check out the fairly awful ‘Stick Em Up’ for proof) and it’s definitely more baseball-caps-and-wallet-chains than gruelling-pain-and-misery, but for whatever reason – and perhaps against my better judgement – I’m still intrigued enough to see where things head next to write this bunch of heavy-hitting lunks off completely.