Straight away, Greyskull takes side A and improves upon their demo's brand of melodic contemporary metalcore complete with everything from intricate dual guitar riffing to noisy chord progressions and dissonant midpaced runs. The vocals are a range of shouting, yelling, speaking, and borderline growling - adding to the diversity and intensity of the overall fast paced changes of the songwriting. "Fuck the Atkin's Diet" is a bit faster and more direct than the other songs, but nothing sits still for very long, and it's kind of hard to tell where one song ends and another begins. The sound is good, too. A little bit rough and dirty, but definitely clear and forceful enough to work. The drums sound solid, the vocals are great, the guitars are pretty effective, etc. I'd like to hear the bass given more prominence, and the guitars could use a dose of added heaviness to emphasize the chunkier rhythm playing a bit more and keep the more complex runs crisp, but I can live with this for sure. Lyrically the material takes a pretty artistic road to exploring personal and socio-political issues such as the environment, relationships, and media/capitalism truth-twisting: "No matter where you go - you can never escape, except in the solace of knowing that every drop and rush of blood is earned, Whether from vultures circling or plans laid down to bloom..." Good stuff. Bafabegiya follows with three songs that are similar to their prior work but not as immediately powerful as the songs on the "Those Who Die Dancing" 7". It's still fairly energetic hardcore/punk with a good dash of melody, but I think the recording has a detrimental impact on this one. It's not so bad, the rhythm section sounds good, but it's kind of muddy and the guitars sound like they're barely distorted at all - emphasizing a more discordant sort of indie angle. Take some of the arpeggiated riffs in "Caballeros", for example. That stuff would sound amazing with a clearer, louder, heavier guitar sound, but the strange recording forces the guitars to lose a lot of brightness and sink in against the bass. There are some really interesting riffs that wind across and make the songs more curious with this one, so the band still has a shitload to offer, but I'm not as impressed as I was with their last EP. I will say, however, that the band sounds a little different on every release - but not so different that it starts to lose cohesion, so that's kind of a cool touch. The lyrical content deals with usual issues such as living life to the fullest and materialistic greed, with yet another trendy song about riding bikes (sorry, I hate that crap), but I do enjoy a lot of the approach: "I will live in a kingdom of nothing, you can have your slums full of goods. I will live in a palace of dreams, you can have your ghetto of products..." As usual when Spacement Records is concerned this thing has an impeccable D.I.Y. package. The cover is screenprinted in absurdly thick ink (black and pink) on matte cream-colored paper with great artwork, and inside is a huge xeroxed booklet with tons more artwork, lyrics, and other content for each band. A killer sticker is also thrown in, rounding out the presentation. Both of these bands are worth keeping an eye on, but at this rate I'm more interested in Greyskull overall, as their energy is consistent and I like their style. Bafabegiya shouldn't be overlooked, though...
[Spacement]
Running time - 10:00 (approximately), Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: Negative Youth, My Mind's Been Taken Over By Useless Trivia, Primitive Affluence]
Spacement Records - http://www.spacementreno.com
