Bandcamp SORE have ended twice. The second time they had already written the songs, so they recorded them anyway and put out fifty copies of a record by a band that no longer existed. Four years later they started again, and this is what came of it.
That is not colour for an opening paragraph. It is the thing the EP is about, and the band told it plainly when asked: “we always seem to find our way back to this band despite struggles and splits. We are all friends, that is an important part for us.”
Eleven and a half minutes, and they are not all the same
Powerviolence invites a particular kind of review, the one that says it is fast and short and leaves it there. The measurements say something more specific. Six of these ten tracks run flat out at one level, which is the genre doing what the genre does. The other four open up properly, and the two widest on the record are “EXITER” and “UNBOUND”, which close it.
Putting your two biggest moments last on an EP that is over in the time it takes to boil pasta is a real decision. Most records in this idiom spend everything in the first ninety seconds. This one keeps something back, and that is why it holds up to repeats rather than functioning as a single burst.
The band are five people with two vocalists. Asked whether the dual voices came from the subject matter, their singer corrected the assumption: the lineup came first and the words followed, and two voices simply allow more. That matters for how the record sounds. The trading is used as a texture throughout rather than saved for the choruses, which is the difference between a device and a capability.
Recorded and mastered at Hearse Studio in Heule in April, sleeve by Anaïs DH, self released, with a vinyl run planned for early next year. The production is honest in the way this music needs: nothing is polished, peaks keep a healthy distance from the average, and the master has not been pushed into a wall despite the obvious temptation.
So
Recommended without much hedging. Eleven and a half minutes is a format that forgives nothing, and this EP uses every part of it: the fast songs are genuinely fast, the two that open up actually open up, and the whole thing is over before any of it outstays its welcome. The reservation is small and worth naming anyway: the six narrow tracks in the middle run close enough together in level, length and colour that a casual listen will flatten them into one piece. That is arguably the point of the form. It is also why “EXITER” and “UNBOUND” land as hard as they do. Start at the end and work backwards.
Lyrically it is not where the genre usually goes. Their own description is the best one: the tragedy of the most basic human emotions and experiences, love, lust, lost friendship.
The record splits four against six. Dynamic range across the ten tracks runs from 5.3 decibels on “RESIST” and “SCHADENFREUDE” to 25.4 on the closer “UNBOUND”, with a median of 8.0. The four wide ones are “ABSOLUTION” at 19.4, “HURT” at 19.9, “EXITER” at 25.0 and “UNBOUND” at 25.4, and the two widest are the last two tracks on the record. The remaining six sit between 5.3 and 8.2. Everything else about the production is deliberately uniform: crest values hold between 11.5 and 13.5 decibels above average, average levels between minus 11.6 and minus 13.2, tonal centres between 2341 and 2697 hertz, and treble between 15.9 and 19.6 percent. The low band under two hundred and fifty hertz holds 19.1 to 21.7 percent throughout. Nothing has been limited into a block, which for this genre is less common than it should be.
Standout tracks: UNBOUND, EXITER, HURT
