G&P Review: Hiroshima Vacation

Hiroshima Vacation
Hiroshima Vacation
Bandcamp
While Fukushima Holiday would have been far more topical, I'm not going to fault Hiroshima Vacation for their name because the Ithaca, New York, two piece (featuring VII of Built to Blast/Operation Grindcore) has a particularly scruffy charm to their eight songs and an intro of loose jointed grinding. You could probably slot this fairly comfortably somewhere next to Vulgar Pigeons or possibly Benumb.
Hiroshima Vacation, who have a fondness for punctuating their blastbeats with swampwater sludge power violence passages, smartly keep things concise, about a minute on average. When they do wander a tad bit long, all 109 seconds of "Inevitable Commute," things drag, particularly a muddled down tempo middle section that flounders the song before the grinding kicks back in at full force. But that's a rare blackeye on the EP because Hiroshima Vacation do know how to weave together the fast and the slow into a coherent whole as witnessed by the very next song, "Saviours Anonymous." In a whole 75 seconds that song races like Speedy Gonzales on a crystal meth holiday before sliding organically into a cough syrup downer closeout that's spiky and snarled like the best of Grief or 16.
Overall, the sound is appropriately rough and ragged, emphasizing the raw throat screaming and overdriven guitar shrieking. Hiroshima Vacation, who also have a split with Standing on a Floor of Bodies, don't include lyrics so I have no clue why they want to "Fuck the Bad Brains" at the end, but overall this is a pretty tidy EP.

[Full disclosure: Hiroshima Vacation sent me a download.]