Review Summary: BREAKING NEWS: Seattle hardcore group wrote some songs a while ago which still sound pretty neat
I wish I could write songs like
Akimbo. Truth be told, I wish I could write songs like anyone who can write songs can write songs. I’d also quite like to be able to play the songs that I would like to be able to write, and then write the songs that I would quite like to be able to play, such that by the playing and writing of songs I might attain the lofty status of
singer-songwriter and thereby become qualified to continue to write and play those songs that I wish to continue to write and play. Alas, I cannot … yet (raises eyebrow, seductively).
Akimbo, on the other hand, write some pretty banging songs. Better still, they play them rather well too.
Forging Steel and Laying Stone is one big fuck off groove after another ad infinitum, played with the ferocity and menace of hardcore’s
finest and composed with the skill and care of hardcore’s
even finer-est. Bluesy-sluggish-sludgy-ness meets mathy-messy-moshy-ness in what I appear to be implying to be a well-structured release, despite
Akimbo actually being rather haphazard and disjointed in their approach to song-craft. I suppose it is in its haphazardness and disjointedness that the fun of
Forging Steel and Laying Stone is to be had, such that the
hap- and the
-hazard and the
dis- and the
-jointed start to feel intentional and, as a result, not bad, but good. Breakneck bangers
Dangerousness and
Sci-Fi Monster Violence are absolute fucking fire;
Tower of the Elephant and
Rickshaw, by contrast, sit somewhere between a sinister sludge-fest and jovial jam-session; and the closing one-two-punch of
Maximillian: Jungle Warrior and
Ground Control to Major Bummer conclude the lads’ surprisingly-nuanced take on dumb-fun in a screaming, blazing mess of grooves and smoke. The trio’s sound is engaging and bewildering in equal measure, as new riffs and motifs are introduced without warning, only to be whipped-out from under you moments later in preparation for the next joyous pummelling (think powerviolence, except relatively upbeat and with fewer dismembered limbs). Something something, sloppy and sincere; listen to the good music, people; I’ve run out of words.
Eat beer. Shit riffs.
