So, what do we have here? 40 odd minutes of noisy-rock. Noise-rock can be a funny genre. Some of it tends to be pure noise and inaccessible (the Japanese are masters of this
, although they do have the accessible stuff as well) but a lot do tend to be accessible. The latter definitely applies here. The roots go back to the 60s, with the emergence of proto-punk. A lot of bands started experimenting, but it never really had a name back then. Then there's the late 70s/80s post-punk movement, which gave birth to a lot of noisy bands. The Japanese always had an element of surprise. This though, to me, sounds like a rehearsal and wee bit derivative.
Still, not to be deterred, I shall move on. To its defense, the musicianship displayed here was solid with very few tracks I strait out hated. It's dirty, and the vocals perfectly support this. It's 'Made In Mexico' for a reason
. I think they did a good job at this 'rehearsal' and fans of noise-rock will surely like this. A bit more modern sound does save it a little bit. But to me, it gets boring after a few listens and a bit repetitive at times. The intensity was maintained, but I found that only for the first listen. Gradually, as I lost interest, even the intense parts were boring.
'
Untitled' kicks this off, with a short acoustic introduction followed by a frantic guitar/drums attack. The vocals kick in mid way through and as I said earlier, it fits the music very well. This seemed quite interesting on my first listen. Similarly, tracks such as '
Monster In Time' and '
International Zombie' continue in similar passion, pounding this wall of noise into our ears. If you liked the first track, the entire album should be enjoyable. I however, found it hard to sit through the entire thing during my 3rd/4th listen. It really did get a bit bland and repetitive. Same old riffs; strait-forward noisy stuff! A bit more variety would have helped in my case, but as of now, it gets a
5.5/10. I didn't seem to enjoy it as much as the others so far in this thread
.