Another insanely short two-track demo out of Japan, this time some strange sort of emo/indie rock or something. It's kind of heavy in tone, but not style, and the vocals are really quirky, in between singing and sort of speaking/yelling. "Testa di Ali" opens with a full-blown rock 'n' roll riff and has a rocked out solo passage; whereas "Pearl Wink" uses a far more irritating vocal delivery, but the music is a bit more creative, using thick basslines, dense melodic chords, colorful drum fills, plus a nice sense of dissonance and variety. Overall this is sort of original stuff. It's got a loose and acerbic edge to it at times, but it's tightly executed, and their blend of influences is curious without sounding particularly out there. The recording's fine by me. The bass tone is fucking perfect, the percussions sounds nice and natural, the vocals and guitars are about where they should be for this style, and I think the mix is effective. The vocals are brighter than anything else so they hover a hair above the instruments, brightening up the guitars might help, but they're on the right track. For a six-minute demo it sounds damn good. The CD-R comes in a pro-printed sleeve with red, white, and black artwork and a nice design scheme. The lyrics are in English and Japanese, but the one song that's in English is really hard to make sense of, and the song titles are quite odd, so I'm not sure what to make of that. At first I didn't like this but it's growing on me. Somehow the songs are actually almost catchy, and they've got something working in their favor. Curious work...
[self-released]
Running time - 5:42, Tracks: 2
[Notable tracks: Pearl Wink]
Egoist for Men - [email protected]
