You’ll have encountered Tangled Talk records before: I’ve reviewed Eastbourne’s Let’s Talk Daggers and Anglesey’s Bastions here on NFI, and fellow Brighton residents may have noticed that they’re an independent label walking on the heavy side of hardcore and riffage based here in the best south coast city (SxC HxC represent and all that, but seriously, this place is waaay better than Pompey or So’ton, right).
As far as I know this is TT’s first split release (although they’re sharply followed it up with another split featuring Pariso and Kerouac again) and it’s a belter at seventeen and a half minutes in length, split between six tracks. Side A – or tracks 1 to 3 if you’re a time-travelling tramp from the past like me and didn’t get the vinyl – are from The Long Haul, whilst tracks 4 to 6 / side B are from Kerouac. Both bands share a hometown in… Southampton? Aw, fuck, sorry guys. I take it all back about your beautiful hometown, ‘k?
Production duties were handled by The Long Haul’s Lewis Johns (gtr) so there’s a consistency to both bands’ contributions that helps maintain the record’s pace and intensity, as does his familiarity with the material, of course.
I’d not heard The Long Haul prior to this split, but on the strength of what’s here they’re one to watch. ‘Dead Soul / Endless Drag’ kicks in with expansive, rocking riffs alongside traditionally growled and barked manvox, but soon shifts to quick, tight trem-happy riffs alongside sung female vocals. There’s no shortage of variation here as the song moves from pace to pace, occasionally giving you a breather before launching back in full-pelt, and the transitions from section to section are laudably smooth. For me that sort of smooth competence and variation is what makes black metal and screamo-influenced hardcore work; proficiency and a good grasp of dynamics.
‘Long Harmony’, which follows, is a song about which I could say much the same things. I won’t, because that would be dull, but I could, because all of the positive things I mentioned apply equally. It’s a shorter tune, a bit punchier in places, and it’s quieter moments are briefer, but there’s still time for some slow moody builds and a slick verse with some sweet lead and pummelling double kick drumming. Ditto ‘Passing of Dreamers’: good tune, nicely varied, proper slick. It’s perhaps a bit over-long with its extended outro, but boasts some sweet tumbling rhythms that are synced across the band.
My main issue is that, whilst I caught some neat snatches of lyrics, they’re mostly pretty hard to make out, and the lyrics aren’t available anywhere. Although a lot of people don’t really give a toss about what’s being sung – it’s about the voice as instrument, as a contribution to the effect that the music as a whole generates for them – it’s nice to have the option, and I’m a bit bummed I couldn’t at least take a look.
And so on to Kerouac, who lead their side with ‘Owe Some People the World’, a song as ferocious, angry and bleak as I’ve come to expect from them (I never reviewed it, but their LP Cold and Distant, Not Loving is a good piece of wax). It’s a two-minute emission of sound and fury, chock-full of breakdown moments are slow, aggressive riffs. It slips into a groove around the halfway moment but constantly disrupts itself with stop-start moments; as with their counterparts the band rarely remain in the same moment for long, never letting the listener become comfortable – or complacent. Equally tight-yet-disparate is ‘Young Wounds’, which opens with the sort of drawn out and unsettling guitar notes that made Cold and Distant… initially memorable for me. It, too, is over almost before it’s begun, although it’s less relenting than its predecessor.
Kerouac’s lengthiest offering is ‘Porcelain’, a well-constructed song that underpins Thom Denson’s desperately angry, pained vocals with riffs and rhythm that steadily evolve, gradually becoming more complex and ferocious. The use of dynamics isn’t so abrupt as in, say, ‘Dead Soul / Endless Drag’, but its subtlety is effective in a song where even the waves of feedback are well-timed. And, particularly towards the end of that song, that vocal tone of broken and furious upset reminds of no one so much as La Dispute’s Jordan Drayer – “And I’m sorry” – although Kerouac’s lyrical indulgences plumb darker depths of anger, betrayal and self-loathing than the occasionally over-sentimental poet Drayer. Lyrically, though, Denson’s imagery is vivid but a little schizophrenic, presenting a multitude of snapshots but only loosely stitching them together.
Altogether, though, the six songs on this split represent the work of two young bands moving comfortably into their prime. This is great, intense and ferocious hardcore, and if that pushes your buttons you’d be foolish to pass this by. Give it the time, or make the time.
(Also, you guys may be totally excited to know that I spelled Kerouac wrong every fucking time I typed it in this review. Even just now, when I was writing about spelling it wrong. Evidently the Beats taught me nothing. But hardcore did.)
The Long Haul: MySpace | Tumblr