Impulse Manslaughter
Live At WFMU
5.7
This band is far closer to simple hardcore than metal. In fact I would say this is pretty much straight hardcore for the most part. And maybe that was the point. Although you can catch plenty of metal-styled riffing for the most part you are getting late eighties/early nineties punk. And that’s fine if you are after some punk or hardcore. If you are looking for metal, this stuff ain’t it. At least not very it. This is sort of the post crossover style that spawned the uglier modern grindcore acts. It’s an Archaeopteryx: not quite dinosaur, not quite bird.
To say this record is not very produced is like saying the porn industry is not very family oriented. This is raw, acidic slash and burn rock and roll. Packed with more fury and less control than most metal fans would care to sit through, this is an hour + of songs from a broadcast back in 1993, together with some bits and pieces from the rest of their career. And there is passion and cold bloodedness that can get to an old hardcore fan like me. Song lengths rarely clock in over 1:30, so there are almost forty tracks of political spite and social carnage. My hair spikes just thinking about it.
But it’s also dated. And an hour of this stuff stretches the limit of my patience. This is for hard core … hardcore fans. Or people who really like to backtrack through the roots of musical styles. I would probably have broke this into two tapes and listened to one or the other fairly often back when I craved this stuff. But eleven years later the spark has dimmed, my tastes have shifted and this CD, while a nice stroll down memory lane in a lot of ways, is far too old school for me. And I can’t really see many modern metalheads getting too excited about it, either.
