iwrestledabearonce
It's All Happening

These guys are twisted.

Here is the thought of an unsuspecting and defenseless listener after the first 3 minutes of "It's All Happening". A truly explosive debut by the five from Shreveport, who, following in the footsteps of bands like Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, and Today Is The Day, put a respectable platter on the market. To be clear, it's not a true masterpiece, but "only" a Mister Record, which can be listened to and re-listened to over and over again... They don't introduce anything completely new: like the mentioned groups, their sound's core is an abrasive and violent grindcore, similar to Dillinger's constant variation of the song theme, with sound inserts seemingly thrown in without much care. In reality, these inserts are expertly embedded in songs that, with rare exceptions, would otherwise have little to say: all tracks are well executed and some contain noteworthy riffs and harmonies, but without that dose of visceral madness that characterizes the quintet, this would just be one of many bands in the American extreme scene. It's worth noting that it takes a good portion of courage to debut with Century Media with such a bizarre album.

The band, on a technical level, delivers a good performance, exponentially enhanced by the extremely versatile singer Krysta Cameron: on a well-woven sound carpet, among synthesizers and whinnies (see "You Ain't No Family"), the vocalist excels, effortlessly switching from a scratchy scream to lyrical vocalizations, from a deep growl to Björk-like passages of great beauty.

Essentially, the album consists of 10 insane shards, all under 4 minutes long, except for "Pazuzu For The Win", which pierce through the barriers of comprehension like butter, leading to a necessary yet astonished contemplation of the universe condensed into just over half an hour of fury. Among them, standout tracks, not for sheer beauty but for the band's different approach, include "White Water In The Morning", "I'm Cold And There Are Wolves After Me", and "The Cat's Pajamas"; with their strange sonic acrobatics, they have a base more closely linked to the gothic than the rest of the platter, where Cameron provides a great clean vocals performance unmatched in the other tracks. The only real downside of the album might be its duration: 30 minutes seem short given the band's great quality; however, this is a debut album, and given these premises, we might truly witness the birth of a future mainstay in the extreme scene.

4 and a half stars.