Despite the band name, this band has five members rather than three, and despite what the band name and appearance of the record may suggest, they play caustic and chaotic metalcore that's actually very tightly performed. Honestly I rarely have much of a tolerance for this stuff, but that's just because so few bands that play this style have any sense of creativity or talent. Thankfully these cats are competent musicians, and even though some of their riffs are straight out of The Dillinger Escape Plan's back catalog, they make up for that occasional unoriginality with a wider variety of influences than normal - and they construct their songs in a way that tends to stay interesting. For the most part it's a lot of vicious vocal screams and growls with tons of discordant chords and grinding speeds, but they experiment with a lot of melody and complexity under the surface. For example, some really slick jazz breaks pop up at times with fluid percussion and basslines alongside thick clean chords behind smooth lead passages, and "Smee, Get in the Boo Box" even breaks out some amazing singing vocals with some really intense melodies that bring to mind Cave In's earlier work. I'm not that big on the couple of brief "segue" tracks that consist of nothing but samples and electronic noise types of textures as they don't really provide for much of anything, but at least they're not a major disruption. The recording isn't bad. It needs minor work, but I can live with it. The kick drums sound pretty shitty, they kind of just sound like "poofs" or something, though thankfully they're not overpowering. I also think the bass needs to be more prominent in the center of the mix, but the guitars and vocals sound pretty good to me, and I like the cohesiveness of the placement of everything. Tightening up the guitar performance a little would also be nice, but I can't tell if the rare instances of sloppiness are intentional or not. The layout's pretty minimal in a sense. All of the text is handwritten for the most part, and no lyrics are included, just a little bit of band information and stuff. All of the imagery is wavy and fucked up, like when you shake something around on a scanner or a copier while it's in progress. Wacky. I'd like to hear more from this band at some point, they're definitely heading down the right path.
[The Record Machine]
Running time - 32:15, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: 2XL on an African Safari, Smee, Get in the Boo Box, Oooh, I Thought Ya Knew]
The Record Machine - http://www.therecordmachine.net
