Review Summary: Robinson has truly created an effort worth checking out for any grind fan, especially one who prefers Gaza and Machinist.
Let's start this review with a cliché, shan't we? Composed of short songs, grindcore often comes across as a “useless” genre of music. This genre of music is, to most, too heavy, too obscure, too fast and noisy to gain the respect it deserves. And frankly many of today's grindcore (white-belt) deserves so much of this flack (let me site: Cloacal Kiss; Tower Of Rome; We Came With Broken Teeth; and the late Heavy Heavy Low Low as examples.) And while these bands seem to come around with more nine-minute albums by the day, it is nice to know that bands like Robinson are there to save grind-fans from this plague of hack bands.
Robinson can best be described as a shorter version of Gaza or a more extensive, interesting relative of Machinist. They're skilled experts at generating boisterous music whose speed is high-rate. Drums accelerate constantly, and have no qualms with blast beats and cymbal pounding. The guitars range from low-pitched riffage to high-pitched, obscene arrangements of notes; every inch of the neck of the guitar is used. The vocals are usually of high register; shrieks are used copiously. However, the vocals do slip into guttural yells on occasion, and this only adds to the diversity of the music, which, considering the songs' short lengths, is quite extensive.
The music on The Great City ranges from full-on grind affairs, to encounters with sludge, noise, ambience, death-metal, thrash, and mathcore. The first six tracks are somewhat interesting, short, fast grind tracks that are superior to their contemporaries, however, this mix grows old. By track seven, the originality shines through, with bursts of noise, long tracks full of ambience and their signature sound. It's certainly a unique voyage in every way, and it is better than several of the other bands in their scene.
Robinson has truly created an effort worth checking out for any grind fan, especially one who prefers Gaza and Machinist. They have completely raised the bar for the musical world of extreme music. They have rightfully put these mediocre bands that do nothing but incorporate meaningless breakdowns into their tracks in their place. And hopefully, there will be more to come from this excellent group of musicians.
