A few days I found myself without music to post, which pretty much sucked. Lucky for me, kurtrip from Lastfm (who happens to be a member of Laatste Halte) sent me this great split. I'm pretty much tired, so if the review is not up to my usual standards, excuse me. Hope you enjoy it nevertheless.
The cool thing about this release is that it is quite refreshing, due to the fact that I haven't heard of "Gonzo", nor "Laatste Halte", both bands hailing from the Netherlands. The quartet playing under the name of "Gonzo" opens this split, with noisy guitar sounds which shortly after explodes with the rest of the instruments, but with quite a deep and heavy tone. They pack a unique mix of various genres at moments sounding a bit like screamo and hardcore, as well as smacking you in the face with some sludge melodies. Even after the first listen I think I could recognize their music, their tone being very raw, distorted and chaotic, a sort of brooding and abysmal feel is omnipresent. The second song is on a bit higher level, not as much deep as the first, but still quite heavy, with the guitar playing a constantly repeating sequence from the second third of the song until nearly the end. Vocal performance is interesting, something between a scream and a growl, but sounding quite distorted giving you a feel like it's being splashed all around you.
After about five minutes through the split comes the sound of "Laatste Halte". This three piece dutch screamo project was first known under the name of "Lewd", changing the name after one year since formation. I have to be honest that I am not familiar with their former work, but the name "Lewd" is awfully familiar to me. By the way, "Laatste Halte" is a name of a song by the legendary "Shikari" and it means "last stop". So anyway, after Gonzo's "Perfect Fit" song comes Laatste Halte's "De Lepelaar" with the sounds of drumsticks hitting one another followed by the guitar bearing a classic 90's screamo tone. Where "Gonzo" mixes genres, these guys play pure screamo, but a vast number of influences could be noticed, spreading from bands such as "Louis Cyphre" and "Danse Macabre" to some Australian bands, but with a lot more chaos and almost no distortion. As you might conclude from the mentioned bands, their tracks are fast and rending accompanied by lots of (group) screaming, but recorded completely clear and you can enjoy every bit of the songs without trouble.
It is a bit hard making write-ups for split releases, especially when you don't know the bands, since they only throw at you a few songs. But despite that both bands impressed me and should definitely be followed for future work. Track them down on their myspace pages, "Gonzo" being here and "Laatste Halte" here. Enjoy!
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