Surprisingly enough this is not the New York hardcore band of the same name. I think these guys are from Utah, and they play a really strange blend of music that tends to be based around old school thrash/crossover type of stuff... but it's weird. The vocals are a sort of high-pitched mix of singing and shouting, and the music goes all over the place. Take the first three songs for example: "Nothin'" has a pop punk/rock feel that layers acoustic and distorted guitars; "Induction:Prey" uses heavy chord progressions with a moderate pace, leaning towards the crossover vibe, then reverts to more of a rock feel but still drops some gang vocals and metal riffing; and "Drak" is much faster with sort of a raw old school thrash approach, tossing in some backwards vocals and fuzzed out leads. Then there's "Ain't Never" with all of its acoustic guitars and melodic leads. It's sort of a "ballad", but not in a cheesy way, it's actually one of the more memorable tracks on the disc except that I don't like the noisiness of some of the solos. "Hellin'" is pretty noisy and the vocals are a bit deeper... there's just a lot going on, almost too much. I don't know. The recording is okay. You can tell they're working with what they have. There's a lot of room for improvement, but it could be much worse. The drums sound normal, the guitar tone is a little raw but it's okay... I think I'd turn the vocals down or at least make them more consistently blend in with the music and definitely make the bass more noticeable. It's pretty hard to pick out the basslines right now. The layout is, well... honestly pretty crappy. The CD-R comes in a jewel case with a purple CD tray, and everything was printed from a home computer and looks tolerable, but you can see printer lines and stuff and it's just unprofessional. The fonts are consistent, but I'm not into the band logo and I don't like the fact that the imagery and color scheme are all over the place with no real connection. They also didn't include lyrics, just lineup/recording information and stuff like that. The end result just looks tacky. The bottom line for these guys is presentation and cohesion. Variety is great, but in this case it hurts them. They're good at both the rocked out stuff and the thrashier stuff, but the mix of the two doesn't makes sense, and I'm definitely not into the noisy stuff. And they've got to work on how they present themselves, because what they're doing musically has a lot more potential than the look of this release would lead anyone to believe.
[self-released]
Running time - 36:10, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Ain't Never, Ironhorse]
Five Minute Major - http://www.fiveminutemajor.homestead.com
