Melt Banana / Narcosis

Melt-Banana’s side starts off with some whacky electronic noise shit whirling around the speakers like a crack-addicted five-year old using a keyboard and a sampler to imitate a tornado mixed with his mother’s screams as his father kicks the hell out of her. Then somewhere early on in the second track, some fucking weird, crazy rocking noise spews forth blended with some catchy groove and the band’s trademark cartoon character vocals. The shoddy production actually works here, with a heavy bass churning away and some crazy effect-ridden guitar screeching back and forth. It’s definitely fun and just plain dumb, but the better section of the split.

Narcosis disappoint. After Melt-Banana’s unique approach to noise, we get this crappy molten grindcore shit with some awful production and sloppy drumming and a whole lotta UGH UGH UGH (not to mention some awful lyrics). Nothing articulate or well-executed like Discordance Axis or Pig Destroyer. Just some senseless grind that puts an otherwise decent band to shame.

A pointless split overall, but the Melt-Banana side should be enough to whet the appetite and entice those unfamiliar with the band to look into them further, although there are two sides to this band, this being the noisecore side (as opposed to their more accessible rock side). The Narcosis side will probably just bore one to tears, unless they like their grind sloppy and overly muddy.