Bandcamp That hypnotic black-and-cream spiral on the sleeve is a fair warning: SPINNER is designed to disorient. EYES are a Copenhagen crew with roots in the city’s heavier hardcore underground, and their thing is collision, noise-rock hooks slammed into HM-2 metal riffing and stop-start hardcore aggression, everything mixed dry and up-front and loud. Ten tracks, most of them short, all of them built to hit and move. This is not a record that asks how you are doing.
Taken as metallic hardcore it is genuinely well made, and the loudness is the point rather than a flaw. The transient attack is razor-sharp, the shouts sit glass-clear on top with total intelligibility, and the band generate their dynamics structurally, through halftime breaks, stop-and-go riffing and abrupt tempo shifts, rather than through any softening of the master. “Beelzebub, the Hypocrite” is the standout precisely because it loosens the grip: an organic, raw-edged crossover-thrash stomp with real room-sound drums and a nasty overdriven bass, proof the band can breathe when they choose to. The closer “Spinner” does something similar, muted breaks and a reduced interlude opening into an acoustic outro that lands harder for the silence around it.
The catch is the relentlessness. For most of its running time SPINNER is a brickwalled wall of sound, sample-tight drums and stacked upper-mids pushed to the ceiling, and while that is genre-appropriate for maximum-impact hardcore, across a full sit the constancy fatigues, the ears start begging for a moment of genuine air that the mastering rarely grants. A couple of the mid-record tracks also blur into one another, distinguished more by riff than by identity. The politics stay sharp throughout, though, “Moving Day For the Overton Window” telling you exactly where this loudly anti-fascist band stands.
SPINNER is a tight, uncompromising, righteously angry hardcore record that does its one thing extremely well and knows better than to overstay, most tracks in and out inside three minutes. It is best taken in a short, violent burst rather than a long sit, and it rewards volume. For anyone who likes their hardcore noisy, metallic and politically switched-on, EYES are a Copenhagen name worth shouting along with.
Metallic hardcore built on collision: noise-rock hooks, HM-2 metal riffing and stop-start aggression, mixed dry, up-front and loud, with the loudness a deliberate genre choice rather than a fault. Razor-sharp transient attack, glass-clear intelligible shouts, dynamics generated structurally through halftime breaks and tempo shifts rather than any softening of the master. “Beelzebub, the Hypocrite” is the highlight for loosening the grip, an organic raw crossover-thrash stomp with real room-sound drums and an overdriven bass, and the closer “Spinner” opens muted breaks and a reduced interlude into an acoustic outro. The reservation is relentlessness: most of the record is a brickwalled wall of sound with sample-tight drums and stacked upper-mids that fatigue over a full sit, and a couple of mid-record tracks blur together. Short, sharp, best in a burst.
Standout tracks: Beelzebub, the Hypocrite, Spinner, Moving Day For the Overton Window
