Chelsea Grin
Self Titled
5.5
A "chelsea grin" is a nickname for the practice of cutting a victim's face from the edges of the mouth to the ears. The cut – and the scars it leaves – form an "extension" of what resembles a smile. Sometimes to further hurt or even kill the victim, he or she would then be stabbed or kicked, most notably in the stomach (or in case of kicking, the groin), so that the face would be ripped apart when the victim screamed.
Go, Wikipedia, go! Teach me something really bad, and then teach me how I can make it even worse. Criminally entertaining. I wish that this Utahian juvenile deathcore set taking the phrase were as seasoned and suggestive, but this EP is scarily average and mostly pointless. Chelsea Grin recklessly abandons respect for their elders through the kind of sonic dumbery that kidnaps high-schoolers' tastes in aggressive music, and if you're unfamiliar with this particular type of crime, you might do well to measure CG in terms of Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish, or Oceano to feel what the bigger, better, smarter (respectively) hurt would feel like. These six songs are essentially one down-tuned, dissonant breakdown who's tempo rarely varies (aside from the contractual spurts of blast-beating), and who's riffing rarely sees over the first couple of frets and into the obligatory arpeggiated sweep-picking (believe me, you've heard this one-thousand times). At least in my ride, its life expectancy is even less than its running time, and within those eighteen minutes one thing is clearly in their favor: These kids can wrap it up tight where there's room for slop; when you consider the actual distance between beats, they keep the train on track. But unfortunately, no matter what positive spin I put on this, there just ain't a helluva lotta time left at recess. So let's gather up these children and take 'em back in the building.
