Oh god.

I know nothing of this sort of thing. I own a Locust record, and saw Melt Banana once, but the whole scuzzy-scremo-punk-hardcore-whatever thing has otherwise passed me by (I don’t know if those are even the right genres). Not that I didn’t like those bands, but the most extreme thing I really ever listened to regularly was the Blood Brothers, and most of my punk friends thought they were tame.

The first track on Rolo Tomassi’s Hysterics is a tad misleading. Despite its wonderful messed-up call and response, like someone told the boy to start replying at the wrong time on purpose towards the end, it is much less speedy than the rest of the LP, which veers between improvised casio-tone demos, guitar mashing and screaming. The lead can sing, but she mostly sounds like she’s being compressed by a giant vice.

Infact this isn’t a straight forward noise-punk album thats easily posted in any genre at all. Rolo often sound like a broken prog robot, mixing math-rock with 8bit chip noise and raw, nasty raw energy. And there’s as much quiet as loud and some excellent dramatic pace changes. Rolo turn the lost angst screw well, before launching into an epleptic fit of fucking, and drawing you down again. Make this your angry album of the week.