Labels: Phobia – Pure Heart
Review by: Alex Deller
Four-track 12″ featuring some pounding, epic-leaning crust. The raw, desperate vocals and polite, twinklier moments make me wonder whether anyone here has served time in an emo or screamo band … a trajectory that’s certainly not uncommon, but also one that’s rarely proven satisfactory. This is rather the case here, because while Afterlife have produced something easy on the ears it’s also wholly predictable. Hewn from a fairly basic array of riffs the band mix in some overfamiliar dynamics and dowse it all in a scrawny, powerless production … the results are somehow not 100% bad, but nonetheless beg the question as to why you’d spin this 12″ again when there’s barely enough time to listen to even a fraction of all the genuinely amazing music out there.