The Pounding And The Hollering

A shit load of hype developed around New Lows in the last three to four months with the announcement that they were preparing to release their new LP, "Harvest Of The Carcass". And this is it. Deathwish Inc, Black vinyl of 1000 (I think).
Over the course of the bands life they've certainly progressed their sound somewhat. I was lucky enough to develop interest in them when they first put their demo out through Jason Clegg's old label Eating Rats a few years back, before alot of the hype really started, so I guess I was able to avoid any kind of outside bias or influence when forming my own opinion on them. I liked that demo, and the following s/t 7" alot more than this LP and their prior cassette from last year. With that said though, both later releases are well conceived and executed pieces of metallic hardcore which draw on equal parts 80's thrash and 90's Clevo metallic hardcore.
More A-typical artwork by Jacob Bannon. Certainly nothing overly exciting, but I do find this more interesting than most of his stuff. Luckily I can say that he has created something ALOT better with another Deathwish band this year, of which I'll be posting about some time in the next week.
Produced by Chris Cory, I did expect a little more from this album. CC's production credits read like my list of A+, unbeatable releases, but this one probably won't make that list. He's certainly done a good job with what he had to work with, what lets this one down for me is just what seems like a lack in creativity in the song writing process. Every song on the demo and 7" was fucking great, but at this stage nothing on this LP really gets me excited in the same way. I have a feeling though that if I give this thing some more time, I'll certainly develop more of a taste for this stuff. Similar things have happened in the past.
Reading over everything that I've just written, I understand how it may sound that I'm really negging out on this album. I'm not though. This is the second best thing that Deathwish has released in 12 months, and I don't expect it to get beaten in that respect. Following their brilliant demo, I just hoped for more. I'll listen to this long before the majority of the shit that's come out this year so far.