Review: Endzweck “Strange Love Or: How Those Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bombs” CD

I was really psyched to see this show up because I'm a fan of this melodic metalcore act out of Japan but have been unable to acquire any of their material over the last few years. This is billed as a "discography" of their work between 2001 and 2004, but I think their second EP also came out during that timeframe and it's not included here, which is sort of ridiculous - because the CD is only 20 minutes long, and the band only has two other EP's to its name, so they probably could have made this a complete discography all on one disc with room to spare. And they should have, but whatever... I'll take what I can get. Most of these songs appeared on compilations, with a handful coming from splits with Fordirelifesake and Straightout. The band's style is basically fast paced melodic hardcore with smatterings of metal and frantic screaming vocals. There are lots of relatively straightforward chord progressions, most of which are layered with melodic lead lines, octave chords, or subtle dissonance, and they often mess with the picking patterns to keep things from stagnating. Admittedly the screaming is a little over the top sometimes, and I think it's a little harsh for the music, but it works out, and the energy of the songwriting is definitely cool. There's not that much variety from song to song, but things are short and to the point, so that's not a hindrance. Among the songs included is a cover of Snuff's "That's Enough", which the band seamlessly fuses into their own style (and it's actually one of my favorites). The recording is on the thin side, so it can get somewhat grating, but it's very tolerable. The drums sound pretty good and possess enough of a punch to hold things down since the basslines tend to get lost, and the guitars are just chunky enough to get by on clarity without becoming too abrasive. Thankfully the vocals aren't harshly recorded, so they fall in pretty well against the instruments. I don't know if the songs were all recorded in the same session or not, but the quality is very consistent across the entire disc, so whatever the case the continuity is fine. The layout is honestly quite awful on this thing, though. The color scheme is consistent and the high contrast band photos look cool, but everything else is pretty hideous. The lyrics are done in strangely sized columns with force-justified text that leaves lots of large gaps and makes things incredibly hard to read, and two panels are wasted on thanks lists that are equally crammed together, so there's not much to look at and the text-heavy delivery is hard on the eyes. The lyrics are largely personal with a few tracks commenting on war and hatred and other socio-political issues, and of course the language barrier clouds the message a bit, but the point tends to get across. This is a good disc, it's definitely cool to finally have some of Endzweck's work in my collection. I definitely think they should've added on the other two CD EP's to make this release more worthwhile and comprehensive, but what can you do?