3 out of 5

Label: Robotic Empire

Producer: Daughters?

On one hand, ‘Canada Songs’ is a technically miraculous grindcore / spazzcore release.  I’ve listened to a good bundle of these styles of bands, and those that slot into the more extreme column – the less-than-minute average song with pummeling drums and non-stop guitars and shrieks and yowls – all have a degree of jaw-droppingness but almost, almost always, even when splatted into existence by instrumental MASTERS, there comes a point where the body just falls behind the concept for a smidgeon of a second.  The drums just a click behind; the guitar skipping a beat to catch up.  Now ‘Canada’ pulls some strings by slipping in and out of grind and thrash and spazz and post-hardcore and whatever else, but these are still minute long ear-wrending blasts of noise that squirrel all over the place, and the group never sounds like a miss a single beat.

On the other hand, I put on a similarly mash-up hardcore group – Non Compos Mentis – after giving Daughters a full-spin for like two hours (meaning about 8 go-throughs on the album…) and immediately confirmed that all the squiggly tricks and fast-pace theatrics don’t amount to that many memorable moments song-wise.  There’s a fall-back sound of plucked high notes while the lead singer does a Racebannon thing and the drums blast away, and though the band packs a shitload of variations on this theme to buffer that, the sound is so identifiable (and somewhat limited) that the tracks sort of melt into a singular example of it.

Which is an unearned knock.  Because I’ll fully admit that my listen is shaded by loving the Daughters to come, where they flesh things out into full songs and allow the gristle some meat in between and the singer adds to his screamy palette with some impressive vocal weirdness.  Satisfyingly,  you can absolutely hear the roots of that kicking around in the background of ‘Canada’, and the last track could actually appear on a future release and not sound out of place.  So it’s not just a matter of a band jumping on a genre bandwagon, there’s traceable growth.  But it doesn’t change that the early stages of this evolution are just a little shy of making the kind of memorable impact that is desired when jamming such chaos into yer ears.  ‘Canada’ would definitely haven’t gotten me watching for what would’ve been next.  For better or worse, though, it’s hard not to see the disc, now, as somewhat average given how much Daughters grew afterward.