Gun For Hire

One morning as I zombie-staggered into my local convenience store for my much needed caffeine burst, the fresh faced young man behind the counter and I began to chat music.... He says he's in a band and they have an E.P. on the cusp of being finished and I say "hook me up & I'll review it" then go out to my car and mull over the scenario of it sucking horribly and me having to lie about liking it.

A week or so later he gives me the disc. The band is Gun For Hire and their inaugural offering is a 7 track disc entitled Saving the Protagonist. I opened it and popped it in cringing at what I expected to come vomiting from my car speakers.... I didn't get what I was expecting.

Bounding out of the gates with "Brotherhood Bloodline" a literal feeding frenzy of psychotic riffs and guitar noodling while the drums pummel and blast so fast it induces dizziness. The vocals start out as a sort of screamo core thing but then morph into some dynamic wailing almost what the kids call emo but not quite. I stopped it before track two began.... Wow... these kids (all under the age of 20, I think) were awesome! Scraping and noisily ferocious, cacophonous and striking, methodical and malifically metal. The singer, Andy, told me they were a thrash band.... as much as is Dillinger Escape Plan, I'd add.

I resumed listening and the 6 other tracks on this disc explore different shades of this four-headed, eight-legged creature without straying too far from the formula they have, which is basically "keep it as noisy as you can but tight and chaotically controlled as well." Scott Hoon, their guitarist, spits out riffs like a Kerry King PEZ dispenser, while bassist Bryant Wong plunks and saunters out some killer grooves and thump... Kevin Smith (not the Clerks movie guy) drums his heart out -- literally. And all the while Andy does his vocal best to cut heads with the screaming monster, succeeding on some levels but in some it's the band's weaker point. Personally, I prefer the screamy vox but if he could channel his inner Dio, well who knows?

7.5/10

written by John Boden - Tartarean Desire 7/3/2008