Grinding and grating, obstinate to the point of obnoxiousness, the Unpersons come raging out of the gate with an “everything but the kitchen sink” take on noisy hardcore. The chaos belies their youth which fuels the pure energetic musical misdirection achieved frequently throughout this release. The album starts to move along at break-neck pace, alternately reminding me of the harsh terror of Today is the Day and the sludgy muck-core of label-mates Cream Abdul Babar, filled with rusty chainsaw guitars and “squeal like a pig, boy” vocals.Finally they relent, on a song called “The Actor” and graciously decide to give the listener some time and space to breathe via a quirky ethereal guitar passage accented by some rough riffing and spastic leads, building up some crazy momentum only to lull you back into the clean guitars and jumpy leads. They finally kill it off with a noisecore blast-fest into a sludge-driven breakdown, leaving this listener breathless (again) and very impressed. “Beauty Symptom” reminds me a bit of Lickgoldensky, both belligerent and bewildering, burning out into a digiridoo and spoken word piece which is as sparse and haunting as the words spoken are incomprehensible yet evocative (of what I haven’t quite figured out yet). “…of Silence” and “Temple of Defeated Sweat” remind me of the aforementioned bands along with Theory of Ruin, all swaggering snotty punk rock sped up to the point of combustion, with insane guitar noodling and wailing, and the vocals bellowing. The bass player fina lly makes a significant audible appearance on the later of the two songs, suddenly asserting himself via a really weird double-time break-down (sans guitar) which is extended into a rumbling Dystopia-type passage.

All in all, III is rattling and unsettling enough to appeal to most fans of really noisy fucked-up hardcore, though at times it seems like they are just being crazy for the sake of being crazy. When it works however its easy to get caught up and trapped in their relentless barrage of neurotic stimuli, and that which seems like a lack of tightness the first few spins, reveals itself as twisted logic after repeated listens.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments