A Day in Black and White/Black Castle "Split" CD
[State of Mind]
First up on this split is A Day in Black and White, opening calmly with an instrumental, "In a Grove", including lots of somber clean guitars and a few delay effects that gradually build in with percussion, bass, and lightly distorted chords. This piece was actually recorded live on the radio, with the following two tracks recorded at the mighty Godcity with Kurt Ballou, so of course the studio tracks have a bit more punch. They're also a lot more frantic and intense, with caustic chords and screaming vocals and a little bit of a spoken delivery mixed in. It's basically aggressive indie/hardcore with a little heaviness in there. Much more atmospheric than I had anticipated, especially during the seven-minute "Part One", opening with more clean guitars and noisy effects that explode into a mix of acerbic melody a few minutes in. This is definitely the most energetic and diverse of the three tracks. And I think the recording is fine, the bass could be a little more prominent, but other than that it all fits. The lyrics are personal and open enough to leave room for interpretation, nothing special per se. Black Castle is up next with four tracks of somewhat comparable material in the grand scheme of things, but with an absolutely horrible recording. They don't have a guitar player, so the tracks are dominated by cackling vocal screams, lightly fuzzed bass, keyboards, and other noise textures. I'm not into it at all, either. The keyboards sound like hipster junk, the screaming is irritating, and the recording is flat and lifeless. It's too quiet, all of the wrong elements dominate the mix, there's no clarity to the instrumentation, etc. This is just not my thing at all, and I'm especially let down because I was into A Day in Black and White, but this shit is just terrible and totally kills the split. Lyrically Black Castle also covers a mixed bag attacking religion, personal issues, and adding in some sarcastic "humor" that I'm not really into with one track that makes fun of record collecting or whatever. No thanks. The layout looks pretty damn cool and uses all high contrast imagery in dark blue, gray, and white, keeping things pretty streamlined. All in all I think I'd like to hear more from A Day in Black and White, but to be honest I find Black Castle to be one of those bands that shouldn't exist. Painful. (5/10)
Running time - 29:16, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: A Day in Black and White is good, fuck the rest...]
State of Mind Recordings - http://www.stateofmindrecordings.com

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