Eat Cheese or Die
post #13
Damitol EP 1993
This is another cool old Milwaukee hardcore 7″ I fished out of ye olde bargain bin. Four tunes of fairly straightforward early 90’s style hardcore. The songs are a sort of midwestern melange of the prominent American styles of the time. Definately some east coast hardcore chug and straight edge style mixed with some west coast influenced thrashy parts and attempts at melodic singing and some flashy bass lines and groovy riffs, all swirled in with a hefty dose of early Wisconsin emo. We also get a lot of samples which are played over the music, some spoken parts (total Milwaukee/Chicago accent), and some nice shots at switching up the vocal styles. I like the drawing on the cover.
I’m sure these guys were pretty young when they put this out… I really like the raw recording and slightly loose playing. The sometimes out of tune vocals are a little off-putting at first, but like most idiosyncracies of punk music they quickly grow on you and become essential to the sound. The bass stands out as the most entertaining instrument on the record, partly because some of the more interesting guitar parts are rather difficult to hear. The band as a whole has a real cohesive sound with some really cool songwriting.
I like this record a lot. It has kind of a dark, slightly depressed sound. Lyrics are vague, but interesting, about stuff like masculinity, church, punk and friendships. The sleeve has some pictures and a brief essay from each band member… The sound of this record is very reminiscent of early Jawbreaker and Hickey, and some other bands I can’t think of now.
Schizophrenic Melodies 