Review Summary: prepare to die
Trap Them don't like you. At all. In fact, it goes far beyond that. They hate you. They despise you, loathe you. They want to
fucking kill you. But since they, in all likelihood, will not have a chance to get within shanking distance of you anytime soon, they will have to settle for homocide by music. You might like your chaotic, intense hardcore, and because of this you may be drawn to their latest full-length,
Seizures In Barren Praise. Unfortunately for you, however, this is just what they want you to think. Because, in the words of one famous political figure, it's a trap! Sure, you will be seduced by the complete and utter fury
Trap Them put on display here. You will be wowed by this record, wondering how any human being could ever be so pissed off. But, in the words of another well-known man, it's all part of the plan.
Their talent for translating anger into musical form is matched by few (if anyone), and every second of this album's 25 minutes is spent assaulting the unsuspecting listener with riff after brilliant, angry riff. Yes, they have discernible riffs. While most bands playing a similar style are too busy trying to be noisy and pissed to care about writing good riffs,
Trap Them are a notable exception. With just the right blend of technicality, rhythm, and mosh-viability, the riffs here are absolutely f
ucking monstrous. They shred, but the shredding is always,
always angry, never descending into the deep, dark realms of stupid, showoffy wanking. For the most part the bass follows along, never doing anything truly breathtaking, but always staying audible with his killer tone, and always complementing the rest of the band perfectly. Helming the drums is none other than blast-beat extraordinaire Mike Justian, of
The Red Chord and
Unearth fame. As always, his work behind the kit is nothing short of spectacular, and while
Trap Them's music is not as double-bass centric as his other projects, his drumming remains fast, chaotic, and intense. He also seems to contribute in other ways, with some death-flavored riffs scattered throughout being eerily reminiscent of The Red Chord (see
Day Twenty One/Day Twenty Two).
But no matter how awesome and pissed the band is in the work of its instrumentalists, they would never be angry enough to follow through with their endgame of killing you without a completely vehement vocalist. Ryan McKenny's harsh bark, sounding something like a cross between your typical hardcore shout and Tommy Rogers of
Between the Buried and Me (not kidding), fits the music absolutely perfectly. He is an utterly malevolent entity with his unrelenting barrage of drawn-out screams and rapidly barked rhythms, and is the factor that makes this record go from simply angry to city-flattening. Of course, his lyrics are just as hateful as his vocals: while there are no lyrics posted anywhere by the band (to my knowledge), and the vocals on the album are largely incomprehensible, one can pick out lines here and there. A common theme of the lyrics seems to be "f
uck," "f
ucking," and the like. It's an angry word, and
Trap Them use it gratuitously, more often than not in referring to things they hate.
So there you have it:
Trap Them's grand plan to kill you. First, they draw you in with some of the most blissfully pissed-off music ever put to tape. It slowly absorbs you. You latch on to every guitar riff, bassline, drum fill, and barked line until you know the album so well that it could well be the physical manifestation of your deranged psyche. Eventually, this album consumes your every emotion, replacing all that stupid, useless happiness with pure, unrequited anger. In fact, you will get so angry at everything that you decide the only way you can truly express this hatred of life is by going to a
Trap Them show and moshing along with the other infected. However, in your frantic moshing some dude knocks you unconscious, causing you to fall to the floor and get trampled to death by all the slamming 20-somethings. So there it is:
Trap Them have successfully killed you. However, the last period of your pathetic life
did consist of listening to some truly excellent hardcore/grind, so it's not all bad, is it?
