Washington’s THE HELM (ex-UNDERTOW) have put together Home, their second full-length and first for Hex Records. Describing their doomy hardcore sound isn’t the easiest, but it the low-end thump it is like hearing the beleaguered grunts of a snowplow after it has smashed into a parked sedan. It ain’t pretty. For a ten song release that only runs about 24 minutes, Home does a lot of switching back and forth between high speed mashery and dour, plodding chugs and off-time drumming. The apocalyptic atmospherics work in the band’s favor, especially on the rip-roaring finale “Boarded Up,” but it’s hard to get a comfortable grip on the full-length as it moves from song to song. Coarsely growled lead vocals support THE HELM’s intensity, but no song in particular stands out vocally. The smoldering timbers of guitars and sinister “clishes” of cymbals harden the band’s isolated, last-stand aesthetic, and though I have nothing truly negative to say about Home, it’s a jagged-edge recording that puts up a lot of walls against common replay.

Hex