Thursday 13 October 2011

REVIEW: Sheer Ignorance - Conditioning (Self-Release)





Scotland's Sheer Ignorance began life in 2011 as a crust punk/black metal, d-beat frenzied project between Neil (of highly acclaimed death metal act ‘Nerrus Kor’) and Rick, the former bringing the vocals, the latter bringing the music.

Their debut EP was released in September 2011 and can be found on Bandcamp at sheerignorance.bandcamp.com  for just £3.

This new blackened hardcore death punk band blast so many genres into these five hyperfast songs it's barely worth trying to boil it down to anything if that indistinct tagging is the best I can come up with. Imagine the kinds of taught blackened punk spirited bands around at the moment such as Deafheaven or Castevet then reconceive them as more directly influenced by D-beat, Pig Destroyer and Napalm Death then you might come up with their sound. Lead track Pay Your Dues to Punk is so absurdly kinetic it blurs, as exhilirating as any opener should be. Social Conditioning could almost be their calling card, so diverse yet assimilated are all the influences: a great hi/low twin vocal attack, gruff and rumbly countered by fierce misanthropic shrieking, drums roll and boil locking the guitars down tight in savage switch ups between chugging and thrashing punctuated by melodic passages. It's a tightly written and ferociously performed piece, more than setting up the head-turning neck-snapping second track. Blood Sludge does what it suggests and slows things down to a doomier pace and atmosphere, those twin vocals playing off each other in even closer proximity as the riff churns up the dirt from the tarriest depths the band can reach, until half way through they draw up to a canter and blast their way out to the end. Militant Zombie Deathsquad drops straight in at full speed slashing out the speakers with hot-blooded full-throated guttural roaring and snarling – Zombies move fast these days and this blitzes you to a ragged corpse in two minutes before grinding down until your bones are powder. The end comes through politicised means with Mind Control Airwaves which fades out to finish, brilliant. I couldn't name another metal record that does that, the facetious little oiks. Perfect.


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