Burden of a Crumbling Society

Irate play a particularly brain damaged form of NYHC. The sort with mindless angry posturing strewn throughout the lyrics, simplistic beatdown sections seguing into more chugging before they lapse back into half-time instrument abuse and a wilfully ignorant approach to any forms of musical or compositional technicality. The kicker? They’re actually good at it.

Right from the opening sample the EP gives exactly what it promises, with its profane declaration of desperation giving way to a downtempo bass riff and harsh half-growled half-barked attestations to just how angry the vocalist. The next 20 minutes proceed along almost exactly the same lines, barring one short detour into clean guitars and sloppy soloing. Moshcore rarely wins any prizes for stepping outside its boundaries and Irate did their damned best not to change that.

For those who aren’t fans of minimalist guitar playing, you’ll probably want to walk away within the first 30 seconds or so. Downtuned chugging is the order of the day, with only brief forays into anything resembling lead work or, for that matter, anything that doesn’t involve having the guitarists hand stapled firmly to the bottom string. There are supposedly 2 guitars on this release but it’s frankly a waste of the second instrument. Everything could have been accomplished with a delay pedal.

I definitely believe the band must have owed the bass player rent money or something though, since he’s front and centre on this in a way that few four-stringers ever get. It’s no more complicated than anything else on this release – at least half of the time the bass is just mimicking the caveman guitars - but, lo and behold, his parts are actually audible. Actually, it might just be the production causing it; the guitars are low but not particularly loud or thick. Which means the bass actually has room to breathe.

Continuing solely in this theme, the drumming is basic but practical as well. There’s an infectious sense of groove in the patterns that complement the near total reliance on syncopated riffing with the general kit abuse tying the songs together in the interminable chugging. Arguably it’s more complicated than anything else on the record, and it’s true that the percussion is all over the place, but frankly anything more complicated than kick-snare-kick-snare would be managing to upstage the other instruments in terms of technicality. It upstages them in terms of presence as well, with the drums being rather high in the mix and the cymbals having essentially no competition for the higher frequencies so they come through clear (or at least as clear as anything gets in a 90s punk release that’s barely more than a glorified demo).

Vocals… well, they’re simultaneously the high and low point. Consistent, pissed as hell and completely one dimensional. Low raspy barks that are tough as nails and, unfortunately for anyone with a sense of lyrical decency, completely intelligible. The lyrics here are charting new oceans of base machismo. The saving grace is that they’re delivered with such earnestness and general lack of awareness that it becomes hard to fault. Akin to the later sludge/grind approach of Mistress, the lack of frills actually becomes a selling point instead of a fault.

At the end of the day, it’s a solid release for those who like their music unabashedly Neanderthal. Everyone else needs to walk away slowly, lest they further enrage the apes involved in creating this monstrosity.