A WILHELM SCREAM’s self-titled record is odd for me. Their previous release, Career Suicide is currently embroiled in a cold war with another disc for my favorite record from the last decade and so therefore, any follow-up for me has sky high expectations. It’s not produced and overlooked by Bill “Everything I Produce Is Visibly Improved” Stevenson at the Blasting Room, but instead by the band’s live engineer James Whitten, elsewhere. It’s not a full-length, it’s an EP.

It’s an EP designed, like most EPs, to hold fans over until the next full length, not so much as a new declaration or vision but instead as more songs from a band you like. It’s more hyper-speed A WILHELM SCREAM, with all the fretboard choreography that we’ve come to expect from the band. There’s a curveball, though. “Fun Time,” the middle track, is strange, in that it’s a laid back A WILHELM SCREAM song, devoid of solos or breakneck tempos with the themes of getting drunk repetitively and wasting life away. It’s very much not wound up.

On the whole, the disc is great, but not exceptional, which defined Career Suicide. It’s more music from A WILHELM SCREAM, which since Mute Print, has been worth looking forward to. It’s the weight of all those expectations that are weighing on me. A Wilhelm Scream is five great songs from A WILHELM SCREAM, which upholds their high standard for new material.

A WILHELM SCREAM didn’t raise the bar with A Wilhelm Scream, they just cleared it. But there comes those expectations again. This is a one off-EP recorded between full lengths, recorded and engineered by the band and their sound guy. $5 on iTunes or your favorite download is perfect, as the review copy (CD) I got didn’t come with a lyric sheet (doh!). On those counts, it succeeds wildly, not just at being songs, but at not being ultimately disposable within the band’s intimidating discography.

Paper + Plastick