Thanks anyway, but no. These guys may be tight, and there may be moments that totally kick ass, but for the most part... yeah, this kind of stinks. There's this one part in "There is No Square Root of Negative One in Team" where caustic textures join with a rhythmic surge and some melodic clean guitars against intense shouting/screaming that's absolutely incredible, and were the entire 17-minute EP at that level I'd tip my hate to these dudes. However, the remainder of the material is by and large an extremely irritating brand of super noisy, artsy, and acerbic screamo/metalcore that happens to have an underside of rather impressive lightweight dynamics that creates a rather painful and frustrating end result. "This is First Manassas" opens with death metal tremolo picking riffs before heading back down towards the circus of spiraling power chords and jumbled "riffs" (i.e. "noises"); "Jack Ruby Tuesday" jumps from barely audible crooning over choppy Dillinger-esque runs to annoyingly barked vocal patterns and another earsplitting headache of harsh guitar work; then "The Transylvania Lottery" reverts to soft clean guitars and spoken vocals for another welcome reprieve that sounds quite nice (an approach perfected in "Speed Lemur Houses Ex-endurance on Account of Perspicacity" earlier in the disc). After that there's an annoying bullshit instrumental of guitar squeals and blown out distortion that introduces about the worst first half of a song I've heard all year in "Mississippi Delta Force", using pinch harmonics and other such audio atrocities tossed in against the same twisted mess of faux intensity that's so annoying elsewhere on the disc - before the end of the track brings things together for a really powerful and cohesive finish (not unlike "There is No Square Root..." before it). I mean, what the hell are these guys doing!? The recording's not bad, but it needs more clarity and more density or two reasons: 1. to make the lush clean guitars and more powerfully paced heaviness hit that much harder, and 2. to allow the "crazy go nuts" nonsense at least some sense of clarity, because the whole "endless barrage of noise" thing just doesn't do shit for me. It's on the right track, but too thin and way too grating during the songwriting's worst moments. The disc comes in a nice looking digipack with a really consistent aesthetic that uses a minimal color scheme and simple line illustrations throughout. The lyrics are a little abstract in their openness to interpretation, but definitely point to a pseudo political sort of angle, and come across much stronger than the often silly titles might suggest: "A lifetime of sublimation, of letting go. Ours is a generation of too many choices, and to be defined in terms of our options is our greatest failure." Overall there's a serious Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex going on here. 50% of the record I fucking hate, 40% is great, and 10% is absofuckinglutely amazing. I'd like to give it a 6/10 since its strongest moments are so damn good that it makes me want to literally beat the "wacky metalcore" outta these nitwits, but man... Hoover's got nothin' on the suck factor of the other half of this crap. Please, guys, I'm begging you: Slow down, think it out, calm down, and start really kicking some major ass, okay? Please. You can do it - you've already proven it with small fractions of this EP.
[Black Box]
Running time - 16:51, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: There is No Square Root of Negative One in Team, Speed Lemur Houses Ex-endurance on Account of Perspicacity, The Transylvania Lottery]
Black Box Recordings - http://www.blackboxrec.com
