Album Review

These people are simply nuts - in a good-natured sort of way. One of the legion of ‘generator stage‘ bands that flocked to Cornerstone Festival last summer, The Love caught peoples‘ attention with snappy matching outfits, a male-female dynamic and absolutely freaked-out songs. Quirky, all-over-the-map noisecore is the rule of the day on this four-song EP; loud, nonsensical in places, and louder. There is a barely-discernible melody in opener ‘All My Friends Wind Up Dead‘, buried under crushing distortion and crazy sound effects - apparently The Love are the(sorry) love child of Horse the Band and Bleeding Through, as midwifed by An Albatross; the audio equivalent of a trainload of synthesizers plowing into a herd of wild, roaming amplifiers. Second song ‘The Problems Associated With Confusing A Four-Letter Word With A Three-Letter Word Are Described As Follows‘(long titles for five hundred, Alex?) sprinkles insane circus keyboards over hugely-overdriven piles of riffs, and weirdly enough, it becomes clear that time was spent on this, as half-cocked as it sounds. ‘This Is Tenderness Sucka‘ is forty seconds of pure chaos, and ‘Beautiful‘, ending these proceedings, follows in the vein of the first song, containing scant attempts at melodies even though sheer noise remains the goal.

The influence of the Dillinger Escape Plan underwrites all this, with the exception of the cowbell chant in ‘Beautiful‘. Bottom line: four songs in nine minutes and twenty-two seconds - and this is more out of control than even that summation would indicate. For fans of musical depravity and extremity.

As of January 28th, 2006 their myspace.com page says, "The Love are on a break. Final decision pending life developments."

At least they‘re honest.

[myspace]

- Mike Postma

Copyright ©2006