Trollheart

So we move on to the first selection of two from Violet. This one looks interesting. The band sound like they're fun --- trampolines on stage, a rapping wizard at the shows, boogey boards for crowd surfing --- to say nothing of their drummer dressing like a shark! --- but will their music match their madcap antics I wonder? I notice all the tracks are very short, nothing over two and a half minutes, with some straining to even reach one minute, so what can I expect musically? Not a clue, but let's check them out.

Hazardous Mutation --- Municipal Waste --- 2005 (Earache Records)

A fast, thrashy guitar opens “Intro: Deathripper” then it gets even faster, if that's possible, and the vocal is fired off with machinegun rapidity, the song over before I can really get to grips with it and into “Unleash the bastards”, which, reading the lyric sheet, appears to be about a “rise of the machines”-style robot revolt, with a sly stab at corporate greed. I suppose it's music best suited to mosh pits and indeed crowdsurfing, headbanging and crazy dancing, shouting and fist-pumping rather than sitting down trying to analyse the lyrics or deconstructing the melodies, of which there seem to be few. “The Thing” seems to be based on the John Carpenter horror film, though in fairness so far all the tracks have sounded pretty much the same.

“Blood drive” does at least sound a little different, and even includes a guitar solo! Mind you, in the time it's taken me to write that we've piled (and I mean piled) into “Accelerated vision” (with the emphasis on the first word!) then “Guilty of being tight” (see what they did there?) is another chaotic, superfast mess. I can't actually believe there are so many words in the lyric of a song that lasts less than two minutes, but this guy sings like there's a demon on his tail. There's even time for a clip from some horror movie before the song begins, and yes, there's a solo in this one too. Not a long one, but then the song lasts as I say less than two minutes, while the next one is one second over two minutes, but “Set to destruct” is the last of the long (!) tracks for a while, as the title track, up next, is a minute twenty, the next one a minute thirty, then one minute right up to the shortest track on the album, where “Black ice” lasts a total of twenty-four seconds!

I guess this is the next best (worst?) thing to listening to punk, but it's all just a blur to me and there's nothing I can really write about it. There's a rather nice little guitar piece there about halfway through “Hazardous mutation”, but it's soon lost in the overall chaos of the song, then “Nailed casket” just hammers along with a psychotic lyric about an obsessed killer (now that's new!) but at least “Abusement Park” (clever) has some thought put into its lyric. Again though, it's a minute long, so what can you do with that? More I guess than with “Black ice” which appears to be a tribute to Metallica's Cliff Burton and runs for as I said a total of twenty-four seconds, then they go for a bit of an epic in “Mind eraser”, a full two minutes and seventeen seconds long. That leaves us with “Terror shark”, with its completely misinformed lyric and totally wrong conclusions about sharks (I'm sure they care, and it's a chance for the drummer to don the shark suit no doubt) the hilariously-titled “The thrashin' of the Christ”, where for a moment they actually SLOW DOWN (it doesn't last of course) and closing on “Bangover”. I am exhausted just listening to that.

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

1. Intro/Deathripper
2. Unleash the bastards
3. The Thing
4. Blood drive
5. Accelerated vision
6. Set to destruct
7. Guilty of being tight
8. Hazardous mutation
9. Nailed casket
10. Abusement park
11. Black ice
12. Mind eraser
13. Terror shark
14. The thrashin' of the Christ
15. Bangover

Nothing I can say. Too fast, too unfocussed and too all over the place for me to even make an attempt at an opinion. A mess, plainly and simply. Awful.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018