Monday 30 September 2013

Exhaustion - Demo


Exhaustion can creep up on your when least expect it. I mean, the daily commute between home and work is killing me and waking up stupidly early ain't much better. That's a different kind of Exhaustion though! This Exhaustion is heavy. This Exhaustion is noisy and this Exhaustion definitely does not go wee...wee...wee all the way home.

These guys only appeared on my radar earlier this year,  but have recently released their debut demo tape via the ever present Church of Fuck and literally within the last week, they've announced a short UK tour with Employed To Serve, which will be taking in Brighton, London, Bristol, Stoke and Leeds (guess I'll be off to the Leeds date then!). This tape is six songs of incessant rage and noise that veers between grind, hardcore and metal of various strains.

Tracklist:-

1. Ennui
2. Strangeness In The Strangeness
3. Inessential
4. Conceit
5. Liminal
6. Perfection Misunderstands The Ends...

I don't know what it is about UK bands, and I've said this before, but there seems to be a huge undercurrent of rage that exists in the heart and soul of those bands. I'm not going to try and analyse the reasons for that rage, I'm just going to point you in the direction of Exhaustion's opening track Ennui. It's a sub-one minute blast of grind-laden noise, with plenty of swirling feedback. Strangeness In The Strangeness keeps that feedback going before they bring the sky crashing down with a hellish assault of guitar driven power-violence, with blackened tones and rabid screams. It's that instant approach that gives you no time to breath, think or control your bodily functions.

Most people think that it's only our US cousins who can make a dirty racket like this, but like fellow grind/PV bands like Famine, Gets Worse and Corrupt Moral Altar, Exhaustion are sure to start building a name for themselves with songs like Inessential. Their black metal influences come to fore more during the intro to Conceit, which gives Exhaustion a chance to slow down a notch and groove, which boy can they do! There's still plenty of off-kilter grind in the latter half of the song though, so don't worry speed freaks.

Liminal seems to drag the atmosphere down to darker realms, with a longer and more experimental song, featuring some textures that wouldn't seem out of place in a math band and riffs which sound like they emerged straight a New Orleans swamp. It draws you into Perfection Misunderstand The Ends, which is probably the bands most metal song; even with it's pace. The build up screams epic thrash, before the punk-laden drums punch out a pogo-inducing rhythm and the bass tones hark at something all the more menacing. There's melody hiding in the mix too, which hits the spot really well, especially thanks to the warm sound of the tape itself.

It's pretty crazy to think of the steps, ideas and sounds that course through the veins of this band. They aren't a band you can easily pigeonhole. They just pump out six tracks of metal filled with grinding urgency and punk swagger. Hopefully it won't be too long before they're battering us again with a new release. Roll on Leeds!

If you've not checked Exhaustion out yet, nows the time. The full demo is streaming on their bandcamp page here:-



The demo is available as a name-you-price digital download, directly from the above bandcamp page.

If you prefer physical releases, you have options:-

A limited CD version with special artwork is available via Exhaustion's bigcartel page here - http://exhaustion.bigcartel.com/

There are still copies of the tape version from Church of Fuck here - http://churchoffuck.bigcartel.com/product/cof28-exhaustion-demo-tape

Check out the tour poster below:-


More news can be found on the event pages. You can find them on Exhaustion's Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/exhaustion1.

Church of Fuck Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/churchoffck.

No comments:

Post a Comment