Kill the Man Who Questions "Industry Document: Singles, Live, Unreleased" CD
[Cheap Art]
Here's a retrospective collection of rare material from this Philadelphia band including their split 7"s with Del Cielo and The Shoplifters, their tracks from the awesome "Deadly Sins" 7" compilation box set, the self-titled and "Pigeon English" 7"s, and some compilation/unreleased material to boot. For those unaware, the band plays a fairly discordant form of hardcore/punk that kind of takes a contemporary spin on a Black Flag style of frantic dissonance blended with more straightforward hardcore/punk (musically) that can lean towards a heavy old school sound, while the vocals are wild male/females screams with a good amount of tradeoffs (though the male vocals take the lead in most cases). There's not a ton of variety, most of the songs sound similar to one another and follow fairly similar tempo ranges (tending to be moderately fast with strong breaks), averaging around a minute-and-a-half each, so it can wear thin since it's a pretty long disc, but I am a fan of this band in shorter spurts (such as their individual releases). Some of the older songs had a little screamo kind of thing seeping in and weren't as tight as more recent efforts, so it's kind of nice to get a firm grasp on the band's progression over the years here. Among the standouts, "A General Lack of Integrity" is one of the longest tracks and features a really dark break with a pounding tempo and lots of noisy guitar lines, "Coming Out in Hardcore" is among the faster and more blaringly aggressive pieces, "Finger to Bone" (another of the longest cuts) is far more dissonant and has more vocal variety with some spoken and snarled approaches over slower tempos that are darker and more spacious, and so on. The self-titled 7" definitely lets the rhythm section take more of a focal role, with looser and more discordant guitar parts wandering around, notable in the rather quirky "Dose", which has a lot of shifts in tempo and vocal delivery (including more spoken passages). "A Study in Elitism" even gets barely more metallic in its use of chugging picking patterns and rhythmic chunkiness. I tend to find the longer songs to be more creative and interesting oftentimes, but maybe that's just me? As far as the sound, there are a lot of different sessions involved that vary greatly. They tend to have a damn solid bass presence with slightly distorted bass runs pounding away just behind the guitars at all times, but the newer works are certainly clearer and tighter, whereas some of the older material is muddier and a little rough at the seams. The split 7" with The Shoplifters has kind of a live in the studio sort of sound going on, which is more muffled and raw, but aesthetically seems intentional and pretty effective. The layout looks excellent, printed entirely on matte paper with a minimal color scheme and tons of band photos, liner notes, and most all of the lyrics and original cover art. The lyrics cover a lot of rather typical topics such as police brutality, education, communication, religion, scene commentary, and so on, but I definitely give the band credit for keeping things succinct yet pointed and sincere, without being generic in approach. "An acrobatic handstand poised on the backs of others, balanced with a few carefully placed pats on the head and a firm kick to the groin: American big business as usual..." The CD-Rom portion contains a few songs filmed during the band's final show back in 2002, in color, with pretty solid video and sound. The crowd is of course nuts the entire time, so it's a decent showing of the band in action. As a whole this is definitely not the kind of thing I would personally listen to on a regular basis, but I do enjoy the band's work and I think this collection has been excellently handled with a strong attention to detail. So, good work there. (7/10)
Running time - 41:13, Tracks: 28
[Notable tracks: Remain Engaged, A General Lack of Integrity, Because We Can, Finger to Bone, Dose, Lips Sewn Shut]
Cheap Art Records - http://www.cheap-art.com

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