4 out of 5

Label: Sargent House

Produced by: ?

I see no credits on this vinyl split, which is a shame because I’d love to know who produced this lil’ gem.  Assuming the 2014 release date matches with who the groups were working with at the time, Helms’ release was handled by Matt Bayles and Young Widows amazing Easy Pain by Kevin Ratterman; the thick bass and immediate, rich guitars that still allow vocalists Verellen (Helms) and Patterson (Widows) notable talk / howls to soar sounds closer to YW’s oeuvre than Bayles usual tech-slickened work, but I haven’t actually heard the Alee releases he worked on, so who knows.  It sounds fantastic, ’tis all I can say.

3 songs by each band.  Helms Alee, Ben Verellen’s post-Harkonen, post-Roy project is sold short by my calling it a Ben Verellen project, as the group – also consisting of Dana James on bass and Hozoji Margullis on drums – is undeniably playing as a unit.  Opener ‘Punchy Stabby’ might immediately call to mind Hark’s pummeling attack, but the vocal tradeoff of ‘Pan’ chases that memory away and replaces it with something that’s clearly an evolution of Ben’s hardcore tendencies into something only achievable with this combination of people.  ‘Gas Giant’ follows, blurring the lines even more, with 70s hazed out verse that bleeds into a heavy duty conclusion.  The three tracks are a wonderful sampler of the different sides of a band that absolutely work together to create a small picture that, at least in my case, make me thirst for more.

On the YW side, we get perhaps a slightly less noticeable variation, but to fans, the three tracks jump between notes from the group’s various releases, which is a treat since they’re all pretty great.  ‘Field of ZZZ’ has the steady moodiness of something off of ‘In and Out,’ with a slightly more accessible and awesome guitar solo.  ‘The Wanderer’ is straight-up ‘Old Wounds’ era, maybe sorta pulling the opening structure of one of the tracks off of that disc, but once Patterson starts to sing – a higher register, less abstract lyrics than usual – it’s a completely different beast.  Lastly, ‘The Waves Came In’ has the grand weight of ‘Easy Pain’s songs.  It’s slow, steady pace and the YW’s sound of stripped down hardcore that builds to a surging final bar is an excellent way to close out the EP.

So why a lack of star?  Well, recording time limitations or whatever, all of these tracks are pretty short, most of them 2.5 to 3 minutes, and a couple of them seem to just drop off at the end – ‘Gas Giant’ and ‘Field of ZZZ’ in particular.  On a full album, not a huge deal, but when you get a smaller pick of songs to listen to, these kinds of things stick out, so in these instances it feels like as soon as the track builds it cuts out.  Another excellent track follows, of course, it’s just a hiccup in the flow.  That bullshit criticism aside though, chances are if you like one of these bands you’ll like the other, but even if you only bought it for one, this is an example of when non-album songs are absolutely worth track down.