Fighting Dogs "s/t" CD
[Ed Walters]
Damn, not bad. I didn't know what to expect from this trio, but this is heavy hardcore/punk with a good mix of straightforward chord progressions with dissonance and melody, adding in some metal at times. The vocals are gruff yells (trading off between slightly higher and slightly lower) and combined with the driving tempo can create a His Hero is Gone-ish sound, but that's a reference point, not a comparison, because these guys definitely don't sound like that whole style. This tends to be not quite as dark, and a bit more energetic at times. "Dust Storms" has more of a straightforward sort of structure, as does the crustier "Children of Paradise", but slightly longer pieces (only one track hits three minutes) like "Red Rose of No Man's Land" are slower; this one often lighter on the distortion as well as lessening up some of the vocal intensity. Initially I thought this would be more creative than it is because they do use some nice chord phrasings and changeups (see "The Exonerated" especially), but overall it's not too incredibly original or what have you. There are a few tremolo picking riffs that flirt with the melodic Swedish stuff, and they really need to stop that, because not only are those riffs weak, they clash with the rest of this material quite badly. As far as the recording, I'm a little bothered by the fact that they sound "like a trio" (even though they double and layer the guitar parts), meaning that a little something's missing, it doesn't come off quite as forceful as the songwriting warrants. It's a little muddy too, so the vocals lean out in front since they cover more of a tonal range than the guitars and bass. The guitars aren't bad, a little lacking in brightness, but the bass definitely gets lost in the shuffle most of the time. It thickens things up, but the excess density all over the place clutters the mix and loses detail. The drums are really plain and dry, which is okay, but again a rounder tonal range would be optimal. They just need to get more of a balance going on, and tighten up the performance a little more on some of the metallic riffing and drumming. The layout looks really nice, and the cover art is quite unique in both style and color. All of the imagery is high contrast, sans the band photo, and all of the lyrics are included along with brief song explanations as well as references to read more about some of the topics. Among the bases covered are animal rights, the health care and prison systems, government corruption, cycles of labor, etc. The topics are pretty standard, but I think these guys are very sincere about this. This is a good record. Nothing too original, and nothing great, but strong enough to make me think they could really do some damage in the future without a great deal of effort. Certainly not bad... just tighten things up. "Sunken Eyes, Swollen Hands" is a great fucking song already. Perfect opener. Stick with that stuff! (6/10)
Running time - 28:41, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: Sunken Eyes, Swollen Hands, Red Rose of No Man's Land, Sadako Death Walk, The Exonerated]
Ed Walters Records - http://www.edwaltersrecords.org

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