3 out of 5

Label: Level Plane Records

Produced by: Shikari?

A tight lil’ punky hardcore package, there’s simply not enough material on this four song EP to swing it into something more than a passing listen.  While Shikari pack an impressive amount of musicality into what sound like simple shout-fests, the group is still absolutely indebted to punk structures, meaning that some songs – Morning Wood – only open up for a few blissful bars before going back to thrashy three chords, or, as with Utopia Dismantled, it doesn’t make it past the fairly generic stage.  Opener Dead Men shows the perfect execution of the band’s building ferocity, though, the song layering upon itself to deliver maximum impact for its full 2.5 minutes, and the group also proves willing to slow things down on closer The Last Thing.  We’re still looking at less than 15 minutes here, though, with buried vocals and loud everything else, so again, though there are some highlights, there’s not enough time for something to really reach out and grab ya’.

I can’t speak to the quality of videos stored on the disc, as I don’t think I even knew they were there until looking up the listing on discogs.