This past Valentine’s Day I found myself without a significant other. My best friend, who is female, was also in the same boat, so we went out to dinner at her favorite sushi restaurant to commiserate. I’ve never been very good with chopsticks and provided all manner of entertainment for her during the meal, which she was kind enough to just laugh at or mention how cute it was that I was trying. But a couple of times I really thought I might injure myself so when I saw the name of this band I thought that perhaps they too had witnessed my ineptitude and thus named their band after the idea that I was trying to kill myself.
Now I’m not really so full of myself that I think this band based their name on my actions. This is a really cool release by a band out of Turkey, of all places. They call themselves a mathcore band for those of you who just have to have a nice little hole to put them in, and I can certainly see that, but their style is much easier on my ears than bands like Dillinger Escape Plan. But that’s a good point of comparison if you need one.
This is actually the 4th release for these guys, so they have been around a little while. I really dig the 8 tracks on this album and the songs show that this isn’t the first rodeo for them. They sound like a professional band that knows what they are doing, and the songwriting is really good. There is of course the manic shifts of tempo, time signatures, styles, etc all within one song, where you might be banging your head to some straight up death metal and then 10 seconds later think you stepped into a jazz lounge, but again, that all goes along with the genre. If you can put up with the neck snapping changes then this is the stuff for you, and if you can’t, look elsewhere. Personally, I am surprised that I enjoy this release this much because usually that stuff drives me nuts, but there is something in the way that these guys pull it off that makes it very listenable for me. And maybe these guys are just the exception to the mathcore rules that I can live with.
I really like “Shores Are Not For Vacancies” and “Television Television”, both of which just bounce all over the metal map but are very fun to listen to. “Your Average Hero” manages to be the longest track on the album and at the same time is pretty much a straight ahead, slower tempo metal track without all the whiplash inducing changes, and it is very well done to boot. And the final track, “Kolpa”, sounds like sheer crazed lunacy, and when it gets to the end of the track you can hear just how much fun the guys had recording it.
Love this release and would highly encourage anyone needing a change of pace to check it out. I couldn’t listen to this stuff every day, but in small doses when the mood is right this really hits the spot.
-- ODIN