- Elementary Revolt

9/12/2006

Rats Into Robots - A Column Of Smoke By Day, A Pillar Of Fire By Night

Tracklist

1- ...
2- A Union Of Dead Janitors
3- These Snakes Will Strangle You
4- The Finite Universe
5- The Thickness Of The Ice
6- Plurality Is Not To Be Assumed Without Necessity
7- The Fuse
8- The Strength Of The Base Of The Pillar
9- And So On
10- The Full And The Sparse

Info

Remember BOTCH? Remember listening to them so much that your head hurt and everything about your life felt dangerous and sad? Well these ex-TO DREAM OF AUTUMN kids do, like it was yesterday. And that's not a criticism either, because it would be nice if more bands remembered BOTCH. Basically what we have here is a sort of rudimentary take on the late 1990s metalcore style; the vocals sound more punk than tough with political lyrics, we get a few ambient noise parts that are kind of scary, there's still a lot of chug going on at the low end, with dissonant bends at the high end and a reasonable amount of time changes.

If that sounds like a somewhat lukewarm description, it's because those are just the building blocks. The stuff that floored me were the little touches. While the drumming is underdeveloped (and mixed low), the guitarist has dialed in an amazing shriek to the tone. It's almost as if he said, "OK, when in doubt I'm just going to throw in an insane dissonant bend to spice things up and hurt people's ears." It's awesome, and it gives it an almost '80s thrash/crossover vibe at times, with a "fuck it, let's rip" attitude that kind of balances out the relatively stoic and rigid vibe of lots of metalcore. Unfortunately the drums are sort of lacking and the bass isn't very dynamic. There's something very tinny about the drums, partially due to production (which could benefit from a little bit of HIS HERO IS GONE influence) but also to the style, where the drummer often accentuates the guitar by hitting the snare, which makes the drum sound a little tidy, like "a place for everything and everything and everything in its place," rather than a menacing force with a lot of momentum.

But when they get a chance to run with a song rather than penning it in, holy shit! Everything gets really thunderous and psychedelic in a super-dark acid trip sort of way, and you can overlook the stingy production and rock a little. If you were a PG. 99 or a Hydra Head Records fan at the end of last century, this will be dug by you.

WebPage

http://www.ratsintorobots.com/

DD

http://rapidshare.de/files/32823816/Rats_into_Robots_-_A_Column_Of_Smoke_By_Day__A_Pillar_Of_Fire_By_Night.rar.html

9/12/2006

eraser at 11:44 a. m.