Noise rock, boys and girls. The sound of planned chaos. Technical musicianship strapped to a hard core and kicked, spinning, across the playground. It's not all frantic, though; they do slow it down and give you a slow-strum melodic breather every so often. Lots of tempo changes, stop-and-go distortion, both semi-clean singing and weird shouts - this is definitely a possible source of joy for Roadside Monument and Frodus fans, but a source of ear-bleeding pain for anyone else. Phaedo also cites Murder City Devils and The Locust as influences.
I don't know what the heck the musical philosophy is behind this, unless they're trying to reflect the conflicted sound of all the voices in the world today competing for attention. The lyrics don't shed any light, although there's a common reference to "the end" in three of the five tracks. "Hitch Hike" muses, "things i thought they seemed. left to me. it'll all end anyway.", while "The Oblong Box" proclaims "in the end it's all over, though it's just begun.", and "Shallow Grave" wraps things up with "it's all over and we're all gonna burn." Speak for yourself, buddy. Maybe this EP is supposed to be the sound of encroaching indie hell. In that case, it'll be interesting to hear what the next album sounds like....
Other coverage for this album
HM Magazine #81Reviewed by David M. PoggeTheses guys play a ferocious style of emo / spazz core that falls somewhere between Frodus and Roadside Monument. This is what would happen if the guys from Fugazi bought a case of Jolt Cola, drank it all up in a 15-minute stretch and then decided to record an album. The result: music that makes gutter punk seem tame. Velvet Blue has definitely strayed from their normal shoegazer pop format for…Decapolis 2000Reviewed by ConradUm, this music is really hard. This band is hard for me to categorize, but I'll do my best to explain it. If you had a psycho hardcore band playing crazy, shredding, super-technical music you'd get this band. Is there a genre for that? You know how jazz music kind of just goes on with no real direction, but you know its probably good? That's kind of like this band. Its so crazy with all the weird…Decapolis 2000Reviewed by Tom BastianThis was overall, a lot of noise. It sounded technical, but almost too technical. They seemed to spazz out a lot too, and there really wasn't too much consistency between the songs. No matter how hard I try I really can't say I like this the least bit. The only time I thought they sounded somewhat cool was during the slower parts of the songs when they actually sang. I'm sure this band has quite…Decapolis 2000Reviewed by Matt R.Velvet Blue Music charters into new territory with the release of this Canadian band. The kids I think are calling this kind of music spazz-core these days, because of the craziness of the music and the screaming vocals. Like Frodus, Phaedo have that spazzy quality to just bust out all over with grinding guitars and spastic vocals, but they also have that Roadside Monument thing going on with the…Similar sounding releases
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