2 out of 5

Label: Pinebox Records

Producer: Adam Vincent

This actually isn’t that bad of an EP, but I have to denote a difference ‘tween this and the 3 star ‘The Fire,’ because ‘Red Scare’ loses any of the notable touches of Fire, becoming mostly typical hardcore punk stuff.

So let’s note some apparent changes: the not AS typical speak-shout vocals have been completely replaced by typical shouty vocals.  The production has taken a turn for murky.  And all the stop/start dynamics of Fire have been replaced, mostly, by straight punk riffs.  If I was expecting a short lil’ blast of hardcore punk, ‘Red Scare’ fits the bill.  But it does sound like almost a different band.  Except for the first track – ‘Silhouette of my Middle Finger on the Shade,’ – which pretends to include some wacky guitar noodling and keys but it just pops up for a brief, brief moment, and is mixed way low in the background.

The rest of this super short EP (5 tracks at about 2-3 minutes each) can pass by without notice if you’re not paying too much attention, since the pitch of everything doesn’t really shift gear once it gets going and some chord progressions are rather similar from song to song, but the band’s ability to play as a tightly synced unit hasn’t changed, and there are some interesting samples and sound happening between tracks to shake it up a bit.  Nifty artwork again.  Thankfully I have the other album of music to compare to, so Ill keep exploring Weak Music, but I hope they got straight-forward punk stuff out of their system with these songs.