BRO SPLITS - TRAPS/SANDER COHEN




This split release on Halfmeltedbrain from TRAPS and Sander Cohen, two noise rock bands from Kent, UK, sand blasts your face with aggregates extracted from sonic aggression’s choicest quarry. Distorted scream vocals and churned riffs out of Unsane meet the kind of drum demolition Lightning Bolt and Hella use to tattoo the statutes proscribing your worst imaginary crimes into the flesh of your back. TRAPS fall more into the post-hardcore camp with their three tracks in contrast to the math sludge and noise ambient directions they’ve taken on earlier releases. Sander Cohen use evangelical samples to breathe atmosphere into four of their tuneful edifices of din, while still retaining serious crossover thrash credentials.





TRAPS convey excoriating rants of toxic discontent over a shifting carpet of prog sludge with shades of Melvins. ‘Four Ashfields For Four Twenty-Five’ invokes a teenage depressive gloom stretching into adulthood with heroin and alcohol as the only forms of relief. ‘Back On The Horse’ is more surreal, its descriptions of an unnamed object (or is it a body?) at times suggesting the bizarre juxtapositions of Samuel Beckett or the Paul Celan-like descriptive imagery of late period Scott Walker. ‘A Boss Keload To The Face’ offers grim humour to alleviate the psychic purgatory – “Kissing Scalextrics put me off electric for life/Getting married put me off my wife” – but there’s also an adolescent desire to shock that might put some listeners off.




Sander Cohen share their name with a character in the shooter game BioShock, a deranged artist who can take control of your radio. This four-piece outfit could be invoking similar superpowers of audience reach with these tracks that mix Christian radio samples with their wall of noise Will Haven-esque approach. It’s a pity they haven’t included the lyrics with the release as TRAPS have done. Exploring any connections with the religious themes in the extensive sampling might better enable the listener to decide if comparisons to Botch are justified. All up, there’s about 25 minutes from these merchants of audial fury. Enough time for the susceptible to get hooked and the sceptical to ask for more to judge by.


Text (C) by Jon Kromka 2022


Available on Bandcamp:

 https://halfmeltedbrainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bro-splits


 


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