Here's some raging hardcore/punk with a great crossover vibe coming out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These guys have been around since 1991, and this is their only full-length to date, released way back in 1998. It's a damn shame, because this stuff is pretty good. Most of the songs are short (less than two minutes) and the faster they play, the better it is. I'm not into some of the quirkier slow riffs, but the straight ahead crossover hardcore is great, complete with pounding basslines, fast vocal patterns, a raw sort of 80's vibe, etc. It's nothing you haven't likely heard before, but it's better than average, and it pains me that a band this good hasn't been able to release anything other than this brief CD in over 10 fucking years. It's criminal. For some reason they combine a couple of songs into the fourth track on the disc, so "Serial Killer", "Seus Amigos", and "Toque de Recolher" run straight through in one track that almost hits six minutes. Go figure. The recording is slightly rough, but not bad at all. The mix is pretty even, so while there's not a lot of definition per se, it still sounds really good for what it is. The drums are natural (but the bass drums are really floppy), you can hear the bass, the guitars aren't too heavy or too thin, and the vocals don't overpower anything. I'd like to hear a bit more punch overall, but I can deal with this quite easily. After a few minutes of blank space at the end of the disc there's about six minutes of bonus material (two songs total) that comes from what I assume to be an older recording session which is a little bit thinner and not quite as effective, but still worthwhile. The layout's really not that great, though. It just looks shoddy and the printing sort of has an unprofessional appearance as well. The entire package is basically made up of less than interesting band photos and plain text, and while it does get the job done, it leaves something to be desired. Some of the songs are in English, but they only include the lyrics for most of the Portuguese tracks (Possibly due to space limitations?), so I'm not sure what the content is all about. There's room for improvement here, and the presentation of the CD definitely doesn't represent how strong the music actually is, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, because I definitely like what they're doing. I wish they had some other records that I could check out.
[self-released]
Running time - 23:00 (approximately), Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: N?o se Cale, Chico Picadinho, Seus Amigos, Fuck'n Pussy]
Serial Killer - http://www.geocities.com/serialkillerhardcore/
