TRANSISTOR TRANSISTOR “Erase All Name and Likeness”
For a lot of people all they need to know about this latest TRANSISTOR TRANSISTOR release is that a) it’s on Level Plane (which rarely disappoints), and b) it features two former members of ORCHID, a name practically synonymous with a time period when “screamo” was not a misapplied term. Past those introductory remarks, Erase All Name and Likeness is a clusterfuck of distorted guitars, intense, unraveled screaming, and percussion pandemonium. With TRANSISTOR TRANSISTOR being one of the latest bands to seek direction from Kurt Ballou, and his growing God City Studios, it’s no surprise that Erase All Name and Likeness often dispatches more bare-bones heaviness than its scattered, post-punk sound leads on. In typical, nuanced fashion, statically charged guitars overflow and bristle over swarming bass lines, occasionally evolving into well-developed spurts of technical wizardly and epic shifts in momentum. The grandest of the eleven tracks comes in the form of song six, “Curse You All Kids,” and it goes through so many twists and turns before exploding that it makes your ears feel like they are being knotted over and over again. Noisy, free-flowing bands in the vein of TRANSISTOR TRANSISTOR rarely have a strong staying power with me but there’s an attractive element of sinister aggression that’s built into this band (especially in the guitars), and none of the faux sasscore schtick that preaches towards exclusion. If you ever dreamed of crossing DRIVE LIKE JEHU with MAJORITY RULE, this should work like a charm.
Level Plane
