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Is it fast core or just fast hardcore? I'm sure some other reviewer will figure it out for me. If you hated the other records you are going to hate this one for sure, and there is probably no way you are reading this. Yambag is basically the Cleveland Metallica, legends at this point, touring constantly booking most of the shows in Cleveland, basically nothing Metallica did.. It's an LP that can probably fit on a 7, longest song is 1:31, there's no intro, no breakdowns, and I'm not going to compare them to any other cleveland band thats over 20 years old. Peace.
Our take: Cleveland’s Yambag returns with another highly pressurized blast of manic, faster-than-fast hardcore. If you’ve seen Yambag live, you’re doubtless already a fan, as they are one of the most explosive live bands in contemporary punk. I can think of few other bands that command a room the way they do, and when I’m watching them play I feel like their music is a massive ocean wave that’s obliterating me physically and psychically. Their records, of which I think Mindfuck Ultra is the best yet, are similarly powerful. With a blisteringly fast sound that lies somewhere between DRI’s Dealing with It and Napalm Death’s From Enslavement to Obliteration, Yambag shows all the budget power violence and fastcore bands how a truly great band deploys the blastbeat. When Yambag is blasting, it feels like you’re being run over by a truck (case in point: the first track, “Ancient Relics”), but there’s just as much thought put into the non-blasting sections, and if you took blast parts out, you’d still have a great (if very short) US-style hardcore record. And while all the parts work in and of themselves, when Yambag constructs one of their Rube Goldberg machines of whiplash tempo changes (like on “Huff N Puff”), the effect is singular and outstanding. While so much contemporary hardcore feels trapped in a prison of context where you really need to understand the band’s influences and where they’re coming from socially, aesthetically, and politically in order to appreciate them, Yambag delivers visceral gut-punch hardcore punk that makes it feel like you’re hearing this music for the first time.
- Label: 11PM Records
- Format Type: 12"
- Genre: hardcore
- Year: 2024