Tag: Lazer/Wulf

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Cinemechanica’s Abrasive, Insistent Sounds and Visuals for “Hang Up The Spurs”

The album’s second single “Hang Up The Spurs” will further cement the trio’s reputation for crafting incredibly abrasive and punishing barn burners consisting of spastic tempo changes, dense layers of slashing, angular guitar chords, rapid fire, staccato drumming that evokes machine guns and furiously howled vocals. It’s frenetic, angry, insistent and full of spastic, whiplash-inducing tempo changes that evoke a furious and pain-filled how into an uncaring, indifferent universe.

Comprised of South Park-like construction paper animation by Travis Betz, the recently released video for “Hang Up The Spurs” possess a surreally nightmarish and grimly violet dream-like logic, in which killer robots roam the Earth and stab everything in their sight, including the soldiers tasked to destroy those killer robots and ends with the moon turned into an angry Medusa that turns everything on the planet into stone.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although formed more than a decade ago, Athens, GA-based act Cinemechanica have managed to only release their groundbreaking debut effort, The Martial Arts and its follow-up, Rivals EP; however, the band featuring the primary and founding trio of Bryant Williamson (guitar), Joel Hatstat (bass) and Maserati‘s Mike Albanese (drums have developed a reputation for being one of the Southeast’s pioneering math rock/noise rock acts — and for a meticulous attention to detail, frequently taking several months to write on songs that may only last a few seconds.

The band’s long-awaited sophomore, self-titled, full-length effort is slated for a September 23, 2016 through Arrowhawk Records — and the album, which was recorded with Kevin Ratterman, best known for his work with Young Widows and My Morning Jacket and mixed by Converge’s Kurt Ballou has the band collaborating with Manray‘s Jordan Olivera (guitar/vocals) and with Lazer/Wulf’s Bryan Aiken for live shows.

Clocking in at a little over two minutes, the self-titled album’s first single “Vietnamese Pool Party” brings to mind a number of adjectives — often simultaneously: punishing, frenetic, tense, blistering, abrasive, aggressively sneering, teeth-baring, muscular, insistent, angular. And that shouldn’t be surprising as the band pairs dense, cascading sheens of angular guitar stabs, thundering and rolling drumming and frayed vocal chord howling in a song that feels and sounds as though the band is trying to squeeze as many notes as humanly possible within a bar of music, while structurally leaning towards spastic and impatient prog rock as the song actually is comprised of three distinct sections of incredibly dexterous guitar work by Williamson and Olivera held together by Albanese’s propulsive and forceful drumming.