Axecatcher "Sparks and spears"

One more bunch of wild horses from the Savour Your Scene’s cavalry. This time, you may not find them half drowned in a insalubrious swamp (like their Crows comrades), but rather at a bleakly lit crossroad where hardcore punk and rock’n roll meet to fornicate a little bit (less than 10 minutes in this case) while the moon is looking elsewhere.

The squeaking result of this short (but intense) sexual intercourse is a very catchy mixture of crusty riffs with a greasy and undeniable groove. First good point: it will make you want to mosh AND to snap your fingers at the same time, like you were a speedball-fueled version of some smelly 50’s rocker  . As a direct and almost immediate effect, you may try to look mean (lifted upper lip and clenched fists), and you also may feel some weakness in the neck (too much headbanging, boy). It’s normal, it only means you are sanely insane (or the contrary, maybe).

But well-mastered instrumental mayhem is not always enough to catch the listener’s attention.

The other main strength of the band is the vocals. High-pitched and raw as feck, they sound really pissed-off and vicious. Or as Steve Soto would say: “Take a cat, put it in a bag, shake it, and let it out”. It will probably sound like what you hear on this record.

The literary skills are not easy to evaluate, as I only found the lyrics for the Circle Pit Roller Derby song. But I quite liked the proto-situationist theme and the “Now they've seen the knife, Who needs to see the wound” verse.

Comparisons are always hard to do. You may read about Every Time I Die, Converge or Trash Talk. I found Axecatcher less boring than the first, less chaotic than the second, and more DIY (I would even say “sincere”) than the last. The closest, for me, would be Mörse, as an other good example of how efficient hardcore can be when it is skillfully mixed with wokenwoll.

You are strongly advised to make your mind about it using: 
Bandcamp the EP
Bandcamp the single Odalisque (Really cool too. Quite different from Sparks and spears: longer, with a more complex structure and bits of piano. But worth the listening)
Soundcloud the single, “Circle Pit Roller Derby”, some earlier other songs (“Only the braves” + “Battles”: dirtier sound, more punk ’n roll, but not as good as the rest), and some lyrics
Facibooki

After that, you will probably want to support the band:
Buy the tape through the Savour You Scene big cartel (once more, a nice object, killer cover)

Fancy a bit of objectivity?
Planetmosh
Feedbackmetal
Brutalism
The Ringmaster Review
Metal Ireland
Drop-D 
ChordBlossom
MisantropiaExtrema (PT)