3 out of 5

Label: Polyvinyl

Produced by: Eli Crews (recorded by)

There are notes of Ferocious Eagle, here, in the poppy noise mix-up, and Ex-Models in the rampant energy of the whole ordeal, and then Die! Die! Die! in its loosely punkish approach and thin, shout-spoken vocals.  The liner notes even remind me of Racebannon, with their ‘yr’s and tiny type.  And thus you have a band hyped for a lot of anarchism, and it doesn’t quite translate on disc because things don’t often enough push past those ‘notes’ to become something exclusively XBXRX.

Opener Center Where Sight starts thing off well, with four minutes of rapidly changing structure and yelps and energy, and it’s backed up by the slightly more straight-forward and punky Freezing Water.  But from thereafter things get a bit sound-alike, not assisted by our singer’s mostly single pitch and a production style that lets everything sit at the same threshold, with nothing – guitar, bass, drums – transmitting the sense of attack that’s probably visible if / when seeing the group live.  Short runtimes keep things moving, and here and there – Suffocation, In Veins, Towers of Silence – the group finds a new tactic, or, like Freezing Water, dedicates to a strong riff for the song’s run instead of doing the herky-jerky routine.  And while the lyrics can’t really stand out about the flat mix, the accompanying lyric sheet provides some insight; the words aren’t bad, though lean very much on vagueness to the point where you could probably apply them to any given spin on disaffected living.

Wars is a fun time, though, as presented, not really anything new in the post- math- punk field.  The talent of the players is undeniable, and the sense that they can, indeed, kick it live, but a sense of repetitiveness and limitation hangs over the whole disc.