Review Summary: fantastically desolate
Mind Eraser is a hardcore punk band from Boston. Boston is a city known for being rich in hardcore music history and producing some rather fine bands such as
Orchid,
Converge,
Have Heart,
Blood for Blood and
In My Eyes. There's at least 50 different venues in Boston that still host or have hosted hardcore punk shows. Boston doesn't *** around. You might be able to see where I'm going with this. Mind Eraser doesn't *** around either.
The production this album is suitably
cavernous without being exceedingly lo-fi. The guitar sounds dense and reverberates with each pulsating rhythm these guys crunch out. The bass is extremely audible and deliciously throaty, providing a perfect back-bone to the bleak-as-all-hell soundscape. The drums are very punchy and crisp as they fight to be heard over the blaring guitar. Mind Eraser likes to frequently and abruptly change between their fast and assaulting sections (complete with stabbing guitar lines and frantic drum patterns) which then dive into slow, sludgy groove sections, creating a very powerviolence-esque sound. The band effortlessly and naturally achieve an absurd level of heavy on tracks like 'Finished' and 'Psychotic'. Then there's the driving punk rhythms such as the one at the mid-way point of 'Internal Dialogue'. The sound stays consistently intense throughout the 20 minute runtime and honestly, to me, this is perfect hardcore production. Not too clean, not too cloudy.
I guess you could say the vocals are standard fare for this type of music. Everything is delivered at just the right times, though, and I enjoy his cadence very much. There are frequent breaks where the music is given room to breathe and play out its rhythms, so the vocals definitely aren't in your ear constantly. Even when the vocalist is screaming his loudest, it doesn't come across as over-bearing because the guitar is mixed in at an equal level.
Cave is one of my favorite hardcore records of the last decade. There are no sprawling 7 minute songs, no, and there is not a lot of experimentation here, true. However, Mind Eraser brings the pain.
Cave sounds fantastically desolate while maintaining a punk aesthetic, there isn't a sliver of filler to be found, and each band member stays consistently pissed for the duration while getting equal opportunity to shine.
