“Do you miss the rap metal of the early 90’s,” posits the question of the PR blurb and I look around wondering if someone is asking me a trick question? The answer is of course a big resounding “FUCK NO” naturally but the CD has been sent in and it’s only 24 minutes long. The good; Body Count, Clawfinger (yeah bite me) and Suicidal Tendencies are mentioned, as are the bad; Korn, Rise Of The Northstar & Limp Bizkit and as for the album title well let’s throw in something as ugly as stepping on a slippery turd.
To be fair this could be a lot worse. For a start the Basque based chest-beaters have injected a certain amount of hardcore into their sound and if you like wearing vests, backwards baseball caps and bulging rucksacks in the pit then this might have some appeal to you. It also has some serious messages in songs such as ‘Black Friday’ which tackles the peril of mass-consumerism. Who am I trying to kid though, “caveat emptor’ muthafacka, if you are stupid enough to buy then what’s the point of preaching to you? Besides I got some great bargains last time round thank-you very much. This is music for the idiots who are as likely to be seriously influenced by lines like ‘Don’t buy it (repeat 3 times), motherfucker don’t buy it, don’t buy it.” I mean c’mon, what happened to the intelligence of bands like Downset, and a couple of the aforementioned. At least you can wreck da dance-floor, kung-fu kicking might even be encouraged with this lot. Money is the reason for pain motherfuckers is the same theme repeated on the next one but some chunky beat-downing and thick production is used to hammer the message across and the band are happy enough to receive their pain as no doubt are their audience. There’s 6 more diatribes to come. Frankly I am more than happy for the group to come round and rage around the vacuum cleaner and will even provide ‘Your Home Is A Mess’ as the soundtrack. The spring uncoiling groove and rapped out vocals carry into next number ‘Erase And Redefine’ allowing us all to bounce around to genius lyrics like “fuck the school you tool;” well with an education like this who needs one anyway?
Yeah perhaps all you want to do is let your hair down and I am being harsh picking apart the lyrics. I could mention some intelligent progressive noodling on ‘One Love, One Life’ and the social media baiting of ‘Like My Likes.’ Then there’s the tight fluidity of the musicianship and the beefy production (at least they got that right) but it would be a bit of a lost cause. I also note on the promo shot one band member is wearing a Godflesh shirt so there really is no excuse for this, they should know better.
I’m not entirely sure why the hell we were sent this on CD for coverage, it might have been worth the price of a postage stamp in the era it was shat out of but now this unexpected item in the baggage area is has no real justification for even existing.
(2/10 Pete Woods)
Leave a Reply