Review Summary: Short but unsweet
Sender Receiver were a short-lived grindcore band from Detroit, Michigan. Although biographies from various websites claim that the band released four albums, it appears that the only releases that exist that Sender Receiver were a part of were a split with The Muzzler, and the
Plague Notes EP. To add to the mystery of this band,
Plague Notes is only four and a half minutes long, and feels more like a sample of the band's sound rather than a complete picture. From what I can interpret from
Plague Notes, Sender Receiver were a band that stood somewhere between the lines of traditional grind, and the growing trend at the time (2007) of scenegrind, which is a more spastic variation of its namesake with breakdowns.
The first two tracks on
Plague Notes are fifteen and twenty second long respectively, and are essentially just walls of chaotic sound created via smashing cymbals, spastic and hardly decipherable riffs, and vocals that resemble the yelps of an injured barnyard rooster. The onslaught of noise continues on for thirty seconds into the third track (I'm omitting the track names from this review due to their ridiculousness), until finally there is solace provided in the form of a breakdown. Although this breakdown follows a pretty standard rhythm (one, tri-ple-et, three, tri-ple-et, one…), it allows
Plague Notes some time to breathe before the final stretch. The fourth track exudes another minute-long barrage of blastbeats, that leads into the first thirty seconds of the last track. After one last triplet-laden breakdown, Sender Receiver sends us on our way with some last screeches over guitar feedback.
Sender Receiver's music is offensive to the ears, but the interesting thing about
Plague Notes is that due to its absurdly short length, the EP is pleasurably tolerable. I cannot imagine that I or other listeners would enjoy a release from this band that lasted much longer than this, and I feel that Sender Receiver were aware of this in consciously deciding to make
Plague Notes fewer than five minutes long. It's a shame that Sender Receiver dissolved so soon after this EP, but perhaps they knew that our eardrums wouldn't be able to handle more of their music.
