Review Summary: Tower Of Rome and Gun Kata never really made it outside of smaller venues, but were two of the most genuinely engaging mathgrind bands, period.
This is by far one of my favorite obscure, nichey hardcore records I've ever come across; the art, the song titles, the complete contrast between production quality on sides A and B. It might be because of the vocal stylings -this EP is devoid of pterodactyls, or maybe because the Chicago brand of mathgrind was kind of more along the lines of grind than mathcore than most of the things in the scene. At exactly 13 minutes these bands went somewhere different, while still managing to deliver that hectic, tongue-in-cheek, abrasive sonic sarcasm that the niche of hardcore is known for.
Tower Of Rome were the kings of the song title. The opening track will forever be my example of long-winded silly song titles bands did in the past decade - "Abbreviating Words Can Be Time Efficient; For Example, I'm Going to Die Tomorrow by "Leath Injectch", I'm pretty sure it took the dude longer to announce the song than it took to actually play it. You pair the absurdity of the title with the sloppy, frenetic lo-fi nonsense they throw at you, with tinny drums, and almost screamo-esque broken high pitched screaming, and you get the kind of idea of old dissonant metalcore having sex with grind than anything else in the genre has ever provided.
Gun Kata's half is super tight, beyond disjointed and wanky, and again unorthodox in vocal styling for the genre, and actually well recorded. GK's vocalist does a higher mid ranged scream somewhat along the lines of later The Chariot. He passionately shouts over chaotic blasting into something that borders math rock influenced skramz.... and most importantly, Johnny Mendela's a big deal these days, we weren't joking he really was a big deal.
