Labels: Contrition Recordings/Rage Records/Zegema Beach Records
Formats: Tape/Digital
Releases Date: 06 Apr 2016
Tracklist:
1. Adios Bozo, This Time I'm Downloading You Straight To Hell
2. Self Pwnage For A Narcissistic Nutjub
3. Rats
4. Let's Look At The Plague
5. Physics Problem: Sucking Nothing But Vacuum
6. Technology Will Kill You 111111
7. Empty Grave, Shallow Mind, I'm Sill Alive But My Head Is Full Of Shit
8. Maybe None Of Us Understand What We Have Lived Through
It feels a bit strange to be writing about the first .Gif From God full-length release after writing about their split with Vein, but I guess that's how things go sometimes. This is their first album, following their 2016 tour tape, which featured two songs. ...Defragmented...Reformatted was self-release by the band is 2016 and was put on tape by Rage Records, and Zegema Beach Records around the same time. Following the initial release, more tape copies were made available by Contrition Recordings in 2017 and ZBR in 2018. Whatever the semantics, this is gonna be worth it.
This album is over quickly. Opener ‘Adios Bozo, This Time I’m Downloading You Straight To Hell’ is eighty seconds of bizarrely programmed craziness mixed with mathy madness. I guess that counts for the rest of the record as well. ‘Self Pwnage For A Narcissistic Nutjub’ lasts a lot longer in terms of playing time, but is equally as crazy at the same time. As per my previous ZBR roster reviews, I feel guilty for leaving it so long before writing about this release but I can’t dwell on it. With that being said, I can totally see why .Gif From God were picked up by Prosthetic Records. I mean, the whole sasscore/mathcore thing was massive at the time.
‘Rats’ is a totally different sounding beast altogether, with a mix of more sensitive post-hardcore sitting alongside breakdowns and heavier vocals. It’s pensive opening passages of spoken word and lighter instrumentation (after initial bursts of heaviness) gives way to building intensity that reaches it’s peak toward the end, as you’d expect. A really well put together song I think. ‘Let’s Look At The Plague’ is anxious mathcore at it’s best. It’s sub sixty-second playing time is filled with off-kilter tempos and panic chords.
One of the most bizarre song titles on the album is ‘Physics Problem: Sucking Nothing But Vacuum’ but don’t read too much into that as the music is much more familiar. It’s over pretty quickly again but doesn’t need to hang around anyway. ‘Technology Will Kill You 111111” is the aural equivalent of computers taking over and making everybody learn to speak in binary; however, .Gif From God know how to write a song and the heavy passages at both ends are interspersed with one that’s a bit more restrained, giving it a nice flow.
It’a not often that song titles are almost as long as the songs themselves, but it’s nearly the case with the album’s final two. ‘Empty Grave, Shallow Mind, I’m Still Alive But My Head Is Full Of Shit’ is a noisy beast, though not necessarily in volume. Ambient noise and feedback blend with gentle guitar that leads into reverbed/looped screams and musical textures that bring Full Of Hell to mind during the song’s first half. The second half is a lot more chaotic. That penultimate song lays the foundations for ‘Maybe None Of Us Understand What We Have Lived Through’, which it has to be said is very apt given what we’ve just lived through.
Everything feels very raw and emotive initially, not that the rest of album doesn’t, it’s just more obvious here due to how things unfold. Equal parts post-hardcore and screamo/emo-violence with some bass-laden powerviolence thrown into the mix too. The layers of noise that round everything out seem only too perfect given this album’s intensity. This album pretty much epitomises the chaotic screamo, post-hardcore that helped to spawn the re-emergence of the Myspace scene (If my memory is right). Even if it isn’t, this is still rad.
You can stream and grab it as a name-your-price download here:-
Tape copies are long sold out.
.Gif From God - https://www.facebook.com/dotgiffromgod
Contrition Recordings - https://www.facebook.com/contritionrecordings
Rage Records - https://www.facebook.com/ragehc
Zegema Beach Records - https://www.facebook.com/zegemabeachrecords
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