Confine - Setting Fire To The Western Hemisphere

I feel like something fast tonight and you can't get faster than this eight tracker from UK grind nuts Confine. Carrying on the current wave of incredible new fast bands that have been springing up across the UK, Confine is made of members of several other like-minded bands. They've already done time in the likes of The Afternoon Gentlemen, Oblivionized, Human Cull, Corrupt Moral Altar and more. Setting Fire To The Western Hemisphere was released in July 2013 via Witch Hunter Records and has gone on to feature in a fair amount of end of year lists.

Tracklist:-

1. Identity
2. Memory
3. Perception
4. Legacy
5. Abstraction
6. A Sceptical Disposition
7. Reason And Science
8. Formation And Transformation

People who are used to quick-fire, blink and you’ll miss it grind will feel right at home here. Trying to review it while I listen to it is a tough task. Opening duo Identity and Memory flash past. The recording/production is pretty much as live as you could get and by that I mean, it sounds like it hasn’t been touched up too much. That’s fine with me though, as It’s how grind should sound.

Very few songs on here are over a minute, but there are times when Confine do find time to burst into the briefest of grooves, like during Perception. I’ve not heard drumming as fast at that at the start of Legacy for quite sometimes, yet after the initial battering the band breaks into an almost tech-metal groove, which sounds slightly off-kilter.

Abstraction begins very minimally, with just vox and drums before the guitar wades in and thickens things up good and proper. It’s got some subtly Slayer-isms hidden within it too. They get back to raging during A Sceptical Disposition. The snare and cymbals take an absolute battering throughout.

It’s pretty impossible to see where Confine get their energy from, but I guess having played in plenty of grind bands for years helps. Reason And Science is probably the fastest song on Setting Fire.. and as it flows headlong into closer Formation And Transformation, with it’s sludgy riffs fighting against a backdrop of utter chaos, it feels like the walls are closing in. There’s no point me being all arty-fatty about my evaluation of Setting Fire… other than it’s fast and loud!

Grind-on here:-



You can download it as a name-you-price download from Witch Hunter's bandcamp page above. There's also a link to the store, where you can pick a CD version, which you should do because the packaging and artwork are top notch.

Confine Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/confinegrind
Witch Hunter Records Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/WitchHunterRecords