Saturday, February 18, 2012

Sidetracked - "Forfeit" Review

Sidetracked's previous EP, "Uniform", is perfect fastcore. It's a raw ear assault made up of whirlwind drumming and fuzzy distorted guitar riffs. The result was a 2 1/2 minute release that was as aggressive as it was addictive. Now, several months later we have "Forfeit", one of the many releases Jay and company are releasing on the world. Right off the bat, there's an obvious increase in recording quality. The guitars and bass are much more metallic(in a metal magazine, they would say the guitars have a "buzzsaw tone"), and the whole delivery sounds a lot more controlled. There are also few uncommon song-types on this release; it opens with an instrumental, there's a noise blaster, a Nasum cover, and a song that I can only describe as just being the breakdown to 80's hardcore song. But while "Forfeit" sounds excellent and the performances are top notch as usual, to me there's just something crucial missing from this release. The frustrating thing is, I can't put my finger on what that thing is. I've listened to this EP many times, and every time something just keeps me from getting fully into it. True, it is a very short release, but I can usually always latch onto something with any fastcore release like this. It's probably not very smart for a review to be this vague, but I'm unfortunately unable to explain myself any further. I'm definitely gonna be giving this a lot more spins, and see what more I can uncover!

Rating: 6.5/10

~VII

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