Hmmm... I don't know what to make of this. It's a mix of emo/indie and some "screamo" type stuff from Australia. One minute it's clean guitars and spoken/singing vocals with sort of a DC meets Kentucky flare, and then it's onto some frantic At the Drive-In musings or grinding, noisy discordant bursts with explosive drumming and scathing vocal screams. The shrieking screams get on my nerves like a motherfucker, I can't stand that shit. But the music is controlled for the most part, and I really like their use of melody clashing with disharmonic chords and such. Plus, the singing and spoken vocals are often layered with the annoying screams, so they can help keep that aspect in check - thus making things less intrusive than they might be otherwise. The recording is pretty good. Some songs are thicker and more rounded than others, and the rawer songs definitely need more punch, but the thicker pieces sound good to me. I think the rhythm section sounds strong, the straight shouting/singing vocals sound really fucking good, and the guitars are pretty tolerable. I could deal with a little more texture at times, but they're nice and dry, and it works. They don't feel hollow, despite the fact that the distortion is pretty light. The mix is also really clear, so no matter how crazy it gets at times, everything has its own space and detail, so they do know how to handle what they're doing. The CD comes in a compact digipack and there's almost no information whatsoever included, which is odd. The cover has some small band photos on it, which are repeated larger inside, the tracklist is on the back, and some recording information is on the inside panel. That's it. No lineup, no contact information, no lyrics, nothing at all... granted the song titles are typically sarcastic and lengthy, so the lyrics might not be much to write home about. This isn't bad, though. I like some of the music a lot, and I think they could do some damage if they got rid of the screeching vocals. But even still, they're a lot better than most of this stuff, warts and all.
[Build]
Running time - 17:16, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Das Plague (French for Germans), With Horses in Her Eyes, She Spat Like a Wildcat, This Charade Has Lasted Well Past the Curtain's Fall]
Build Records - http://www.buildrecords.com
