This humorous hardcore band from Esp?rito Santo, Brazil, whose name basically translates to "excrement", knocks out 25 tracks of raw and grinding hardcore in less than 25 minutes. It's not exactly my thing because a lot of the songs are sort of sloppy and it's obvious that the band is sort of screwing around and having fun sometimes, which is fine, but it doesn't really work for me in this case. I'm also not really into the recording. I like the bass sound and the drums are good, but the guitars are too fuzzed out, and I find the distortion to be pretty distracting. The throaty high-pitched vocal shouts aren't exactly helpful, but they are mixed back in with the music at least. I don't know, it's mainly those guitars and the rugged performance that sort of rub me the wrong way. When they sort of get down and dirty in a Black Flag way I can handle it, but that's not always the case, and even so, the vocals still don't really fit. I don't mind that they use a lot of samples either, because they tend to pick samples that sounds pretty fitting, though I must admit that when the majority of the songs on a 25-track CD contain samples either at the beginning or the end (or both) it can get old. "Fuckkyou Before" is short as hell and straight to the point, definitely one of the better songs, as is the similar "Gra?as ao Merda". I definitely wish they'd stick more with that line of delivery. The CD comes in a full color slipcase with an old Coca-Cola ad on the cover. Inside is a fucking hilarious foldout booklet, all in color, with tons of collaged images and text (99% of which is all in Portuguese). I'm not really sure what the lyrics are about but I assume from the humorous nature of the imagery and a few of the comments that I can make out that it's probably outlandishly funny material. It looks great, though. I wish I could read Portuguese! It's too bad, if they'd use the straight shouting vocals more often and clean up their performance a bit they could really kick things into gear. I don't dislike this, but it's not something I'd choose to listen to on a regular basis by any means.
[L?j?]
Running time - 24:51, Tracks: 25
[Notable tracks: Olhos da Cena, Fuckkyou Before, Gra?as ao Merda]
L?j? Records - http://www.laja.com.br
