Kill.Fucking.Everyone.

An analogy: this is the worst day of your life. Another eight hours at your white-collar sweatshop, eight hours sacrificed to the mindless mass of western capitalism. Everyone you work with is insane, smiling moronically as they pester you with their meaningless tasks and inane chatter. They won't leave you alone so you can do your job that you hate; but it doesn't matter because you didn't get that miniscule raise you were promised. Which means you can't pay your rent, which is already past due, which means you're going to get kicked out, and have to move into an even smaller and dirtier apartment and have an even harder time trying to regain your sanity during those few precious hours when you aren't slaving at the office or passed out from exhaustion in your bed. And you won't be able to afford those parts you need to get your rustbucket of a car running again, which means you're stuck taking the bus with all the homeless drug addicts and drunks and fat old ladies who take up three quarters of the bench so you can't even sit down.

Today was a bad day, but this album isn't the soundtrack to it. This album is the soundtrack to tomorrow morning, when you show up to work holding the handgun you purchased last night with what little money you had remaining in your bank account. You can imagine the brief introduction as the elevator ride to your office, the pounding sound increasing in volume along with the adrenaline pounding in your head as the anticipation builds. Then the doors open and the record explodes into a chaotic blur of violent sound.

As hectic as it is, the music takes a few rounds of listening before you can begin to digest the contents. To simplify this process it can be useful to isolate the individual instrumental elements and observe how they contribute to the whole: the vocals are a mass of incoherent screaming, insane ramblings of every bad thought you ever had shouted one after another at the top of your lungs. You can only make out the odd word unless you look at the liner notes where a mess of scrawled thoughts illustrate the subject matter nicely:

Your diminishing income finances your pain
Your compliance agreement never complain

Slitting my wrists just to compete
Refinancing my life away

In the next aisle between nihilism and despair
Lies the purchase that needs you

The barrels of life pushed deep in your mouth
Itchy fingers in need of a scratch

Squeeze the trigger

Relentless hate and despair they may express, but you can also hear a sense of jubilation at points on this album. There are moments when the release of anger leads to triumph, to proclamations that this activity is a satisfying one and that victory has been achieved. Perhaps this is most apparent during the one moment where the protagonist's objective is revealed most clearly to the listener: the unmistakable repetition of "I will...Kill you..." during "Wallet Sized Dental Records".

The percussion is prevalent on this recording, punctuating the chaos at gracefully targeted points like the bullets fired into each coworker that comes into sight. It feels as if the drumming is the only thing keeping this album from descending into total impenetrable noise, as all the other elements often avoid following any strict or predictable structure. One could almost imagine that parts of this recording are heavily improvised - the vocals most obviously are freeform and only sporadically coincide rhythmically with the rest of the noise. Even the riffing rarely stops to repeat a clearly defined theme, instead depending heavily on rapid movements between a set of a few low-end chords. During such instances the musical whole shows a focus on rhythm and chaotic noise instead of melody, but this focus allows the scattered moments of melody and transitional riffs to stand out memorably over the abrasive background. An appropriate example of this is found in the track "Civic Bloodlust"�, where one of the album's more notable main themes carries the song while being surrounded by nearly anti-melodic verses; this contrast works well to enforce the impact of a rare moment of clarity when it is returned to. The balance between bedlam and lucidity is certainly in the former's favour, but this formula makes the songs quite memorable for such a noisy album.

The term "songs", however, isn't the most appropriate one to use when discussing this album. It would be inaccurate to describe it as a collection of clearly defined movements; instead each track bleeds into the next like so much white collar blood. This is a work best experienced in its brusque entirety so that the progression from one moment of insanity to another isn't destroyed and each moment is preserved in its morbid context. The brevity of the album not only follows the traditional grindcore standard but works to preserve the intense nature of the subject manner, before any thoughts of “is this really a good idea” can occur the damage has been done and the recording is over.

A black metal influence in the musical aspect surfaces at points throughout this album; grindcore for extreme metal fans makes for a concise description (Pig Destroyer is the popular comparison that comes to mind). But while similarities exist in riffing and vocal delivery, it is clear that grind is the main force at work here. The black metal characteristics end at the auditory level, as this album is firmly rooted not in the symbolism of that genre, but in the harsh reality of hardcore punk. The physical presentation enforces this, what few pentagrams that appear are outweighed by the harsh white packaging, the ink on water colour scrapbook-style lyrical presentation, and an appropriately misanthropic quote from a George Saunders short story. So while lacking metaphorical ambition in the black metal sense, this album still serves a real purpose – not as an allegorical exploration but as an anger management tool. This isn’t something to make you think, this is something your psychiatrist would prescribe (“Whenever you have those feelings I want you to take a deep breath and listen to this album”).

Problems can arise when an album relies so heavily on pure emotion, the artist can be so busy reacting to a situation that there is no room left for a coherent message of any greater depth. Here, however, the musical execution of the emotional reaction proves successful. A greater attempt at artistic ambition could cause the extremely tensed tendons of the album to snap, destroying all focus and consequentially the album's enjoyable nature. We are left with an album that while simplistic in concept offers much to the listener musically; intricate concentrations of sound reward the listener that takes the time to decipher them with a listening experience that remains satisfying over repeated plays.

As the music ends, so does our ongoing analogy. "Steaming Pile Of Outcome Measures" collapses into a weakened state of chaos as the expenditure of energy and the inevitable police retaliation have taken their toll on our protagonist. Before fading into silence we hear one last outburst of violence; probably you've gone down shooting or taken a suicidal shot to the head. Either way, this has been a fulfilling endeavor.