Review Summary: if you can’t handle the fists get the fuck outta the pit
11 of 11 thought this review was well writtenTake yourself back to your first pit experience. I’m gonna take a huge leap here and say it was during a fxkin br00tal!11 concert and not some indie gathering. The chaos, intensity and oozing of testicular fortitude were enough to rile the brave boy (‘one’ for all the woman activists out there) inside you. From there you ceased any logical thinking and let the music, and other rowdy sheep, dictate the future. Frightening no doubt for a first time experience but machismo instills a sense of achievement from the event; so when that fist connects with your jaw you’d likely think more fury and less scurry. It’s important to revel in that fateful glory as Kerouac makes you wanna do it all over again.
Now before you go breaking out those Emmure boxing gloves make sure you’ve got some throw away clothing on because Kerouac are filthy, vile, disgusting, nasty, and all the more beautiful because of it. Fusing an unrelenting force of chaos with sleight of hand melody Kerouac are one of the most promising acts revealed this year. Expected from the title of the record,
Cold and Distant, Not Loving is dense and unapologetic about it. While a lot of their force is brute and sealed with an iron fist they have a Jekyll and Hyde distinction to them that alters their sound and bite from time to time. This is no more obvious than opener “Heavy Hearted” combining a crushing love of post-metal with trendy tempo intervals. While their aura is guarded make no mistake about it the band is full on hardcore; breaking out dissonance across rampaging bass lines are dropped like hail – nay, meteors, and their heaviness is a tool, not a gimmick, amplifying hallow lines of “IT MAKES ME SHIVER!”.
Their greatest arsenal however is the belligerence. The feeling here is resolute and employed to overcome the listener. There’s no need to convince you because the music feels created as cathartic value. It’s in the way they shift time changes like mood swings allowing no sense of comfortableness. The way there’s no distinction in instruments on occasion because the focus is in maddening the revelations; solidified by song titles, “A Bastard Behind the Eyes”, strengthened in lyricism –
hope in our hearts but hate in our lungs, stuck on repeat our words, we become, we’re heavy handed poets, reciting verses that could bleed into one.
There’s only one result when listening to
Cold and Distant, something has broken. Whether it’s the computer screen, a door frame or your fist, Kerouac evokes emotions in you suited for one outlet, the pit. It seems childish and unintelligent on paper, but on wax, or .mp3 file, all meaning is grounded. Kerouac have tapped into a source few bands can, like
Throats,
Converge and
Galleons they’re creating havoc because they can.
