Here's some frantic, noisy, abrasive, heavy rock from members of Cast Iron Hike and La Gritona, among others. I wasn't won over by the first two tracks, but by the time "Blame the Bosses" rolled around with its driving rhythm, subtle dissonance and melody, and seething distorted vocals, that was all it took to know what these dudes are capable of. I'm still not fond of the brief instrumental pieces that revolve mainly around concrete drumbeats with lots of caustic noise and effects, not only because they're sort of annoying and they get old, but because they're barely any shorter than the "real" songs - which average around three minutes each or so. Slower, more tangible instrumentals like "Dr. Alan Ramey" are far stronger, however... it's only the really over the top noisy stuff that sort of sucks. "Let My People Go" is nothing but resonant acoustic guitars and really softly sung vocals, really standing out a hell of a lot. Later tracks like "Cobra Kai" have more of an experimental twist to the structures and sounds created which is nice, while the eight-minute "Big Boned" opens with some really metallic crunches that totally kill. To my dismay the bulk of the disc does focus on instrumentation, but they can kick some ass in that department as well... I just wish they used the vocals more often. I really like the recording here. The rhythm section sounds fucking sweet, especially the bass tone, which is just fucking intense. Everything else is really warm and natural, but the bass tone really holds down the core of the mix, especially when some of the guitar textures lean towards the grating side. The mix is really tight though, so everything meshes together well and even the distorted vocals are kept in check. The CD comes in a jet black digipack with bigfoot screenprinted on both the face of the disc and the cover. The cover also has a piece of white styrofoam glued to it, while the tracklist is printed on a black sticker that slides into the front panel of the digipack. A simple, effective way to take advantage of D.I.Y. packaging. This is a really good disc, but it would've been a shitload better had they dropped all the filler and just rocked. The end result is too damn long and there are too many worthless tracks of random stringed instrument noise over drum fills.
[Traktor7]
Running time - 50:29, Tracks: 16
[Notable tracks: Blame the Bosses, That Tears It, Terminator, Big Boned]
Traktor7 Records - http://www.traktor7.com
