3 out of 5

Label: Badtaste

Producer: John Congleton, Logh

You read a lot of press about Logh’s ‘Sunset Panorama,’ and then maybe you’re like me and dig John Congleton, so you make the decision between and EP and ‘The Raging Sun’ and opted to save some dollars with the former.  Or maybe you’re double like me and figured the EP would be more difficult to find later on, so you bought it first.  Or triple like me, and you sorta bought both anyway because that’s what you do.  The point is: I’M NOT ALONE.  Five stars.  The end.

And then we (the ‘we’ who are not alone) transitioned to the review: ‘Sunset Panaroma,’ arriving on Hydra Head with a lotta’ glowing praise, was, to me, an underwhelming affair.  Much better was the emo balladry of ‘Raging’ that was given teeth by Congleton’s drum-heavy production and then further exacerbated into something special by the group’s ability to occasionally break out into leagues of noise.  As ‘Contractor’ is something of a single from ‘Raging,’ I was hoping for / expecting more of the same.  But instead we get something that feels a bit more like B-sides.  Now what’s novel is that half of it is instrumental, but on first listen that’s actually a distraction, as you’re waiting for Mattias Friberg to start crooning at some point… and thus when the track ends it feels a bit ant-climactic.  The disc does work well as a complement to the album from which it was sprung – especially the acoustic take of ‘The Bones of Generations,’ as the screamed lyrics of the amplified version on ‘Raging’ are indiscernible and its nice to be able to compare what you thought you were hearing with what’s being said (can’t remember if the liner notes of ‘Raging’ have lyrics, but regardless, it’s always more effective, to my ears, to hear the words vs. reading along) – and the rest of the tracks follow comparable composition schemes, closer ‘Wild Card’ bringing some layered drumming back into the mix.

Once your expectations are set, ‘The Contractor and the Assassin’ has some rewarding bits and pieces, but is best listened to as extra material from the preceding disc; hoping for it to be a standalone EP will leave you feeling like you should’ve saved your Congleton Money (CM funds) for something else.