Daighila/Sarjan HassanRedefining D.I.Y.
Revulsion
Southeast Asia has been kicking so much ass the last few years that it was overdue for a clunker. This thrashtastic Malaysian tag team manages to blend the inoffensively pedestrian with the outright unlistenable into a single cassette that screams caveat emptor.
For the merely inoffensive, Daighila sound a tad like old Anthrax or maybe Corrosion of Conformity's Technocracy played at the wrong speed. Their side of the cassette rounds up eight songs recorded between 2007 and 2009 whose sound quality varies wildly, making it hard to enjoy the whole experience. The double picked "Between Lines" and the ironically menacing "Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining" are probably the two best of the bunch and smartly kick things off. So while the sound quality takes a noticeable dip from there, it's still manageable and the wonderful "Certainty Approaches" hits that blurred relativistic space where thrash bleeds into grindcore.
Things go from passable to worse when you flip the cassette. Sarjan Hassan, who swiped Nuclear Assault's logo, failed to learn from Daighila's example and start with the shittiest sounding song of their 12. To say that things improve from there is only an acknowledgement that there was nowhere else to go but up because you have to strain to tell that "Live Free" is not an instrumental. Unfortunately, when the singer does become audible in the later songs, his featureless delivery, repeating the same phrasings line after line, detracts rather than adds to the songs.
It's a shame because Sarjan Hassan's fractured English (see "Greatest Fucking Sham Ripoff," "Do It Yourself Not Means Do it Crappy But Do it Properly" or "Hardcore Scene Not For an Asshole") has a certain smile inducing charm. Sarjan Hassan, I'd say skip the English lessons, spend some more time in the rehearsal space and invest in a decent studio next time out.
[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]
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