TANTRUM

Tantrum "The Frontier Bursts Into View" LP

9/10 - [Radar Swarm]

Fuck yes! Oh fuck, fuck, fucking yes! This French act unloads some pounding fucking monolithic excellence in the vein of the finer side of the Hydra Head camp (think Isis, Knut, and so forth - decidedly more the latter than the former), blending doomy, sludgy, rhythmic dirges with a more caustic and abrasive side - often with fucked up shifts and time signatures involved. And it punishes. The recording sounds like a million bucks with hugely resonant percussion, sick distorted bass, perfectly crunchy and forceful guitars, searing vocal screams, and a dead even mix with perfect cohesion and ample clarity. Holy shit, I love this. The songwriting fairly consistently sways to and fro with lots of changes, but it all makes sense and stays unified in the end, so despite the presence of copious amounts of dissonance it's very tangible and rhythmically massive. The bass tone really does play a huge part in making this stuff so oppressive, and I totally love the vocals as well, because they're just relentless throat scorching screams that aren't at all irritating. "Pale" is a little chunkier with some start/stop rhythms (not the groovy variety, trust me), but "Dead End" closes side A with a little more twisted melody (even vocally, hinting at singing) in the vein of a band like Burst or something like that, adding a technical nuance that really stands out and highlights how tight and accurate the playing is here. Side B opens with the repetitive instrumental "Suppose Control Can Increase", leaning in on a slight Godflesh influence different from most of the other tracks herein, and every damn bit as effective. Closer "Other Suggestions and So On" follows a few harsher cuts with a more openly melodic side using octave chords and slightly more streamlined chord progressions, slowing down to a nice crawl at times and letting the notes really ring forth. The LP comes on clear vinyl an amazing gatefold sleeve with a strict color palette (almost exclusively shades of blue and yellow) and a layout structured very much in the Hydra Head school of repeating textural patterns, complete with excellent use of subtle gloss overlay printing for the band name and some of the patterns on the outer cover. The lyrics fit the tone of the music perfectly, too: "We fucked up our lives and didn't even turn back to pick up what we left on the ground, We screwed up everything we touched, invariably, We didn't have enough humor for a single exception, We crawled toward the spring and we weren't thirsty at all, We forgot to live our lives and didn't even laugh when the party began" To my great dismay my copy of the sleeve got ruined in a recent tropical storm when my roof decided to leak profusely, so thankfully I was able to get the LP cleaned up enough to play perfectly! I plan to buy another copy of this ASAP, as well as scoring the CD pressing, because this shit rules. The LP is limited to only 500 copies though, so act fast if you'd like to snag one, and I highly fucking recommend it. I'm so glad this showed up in my mailbox, because this band deserves a shitload more attention, and something tells me they're going to be criminally underrated unless someone steps up. So please, by all means, fucking check this out. Do yourself a favor. Man, I love this. Great, great work.

Running time - 37:00 (approximately), Tracks: 10

[Notable tracks: Pale, Dead End, Suppose Control Can Increase, Other Suggestions and So On]

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