Listing a host of American hardcore bands I’ve never heard of as their influences and labelling themselves “the new soundtrack of the circle pitting youth†I placed this 8 track CD in my player with a hint of reluctance. It’s quite old you see, I don’t need any severe speaker damage or anything.
In fact, this shit isn’t altogether that bad, once again it’s wrong to be misled by bands biographies. The fact the 8 tracks on this album clock up an incredibly short 11 minutes and 2 seconds mean that before you’ve even started to like a song, or try to get into it, it’s finished and gone. So as you can imagine, I can’t really work out whether I like it or not. A bit like injections really, you fear them so much, and when you get sat down, you don’t even have chance to work out what you don’t like about it, because it’s suddenly over *. Opening track, “Fuck Your Drama†lasts a mere 50 seconds, to which I presumed was a short tasteless, angry blast sort of intro, but when the next track down this extreme hardcore, ferocious assault, “Theme for a Jackass,†flew by at just over a minute long, I got the picture of what I was dealing with and I’m sure you get what I’m hitting at here also, even if the comparison I made was a bit dodgy to say the least.
The Rites definitely are a bunch of angry young men, every song is delivered like a head butt from a very angry sumo wrestler because you just spat in his bowl of noodles, fast, intense and bloody hard. Only in track 6 “No More I’m Sorry†do the band chill things off a bit tempo wise and give us a song that clocks in over 3 minutes. You can’t help but like this CD though. The performance is like nothing I’ve ever really experienced before, the drumming is impeccable. I’d certainly want to see this band live, to see the energy, to see the casualties in the pit, and to see how many songs these guys would actually play on the set sheet…
* Worst comparison in Punktastic history.
Pete
www.coalition-records.com