Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Quarter the Villain’s Regicide EP.

“Right from the start I need to make it clear that your total lack of ambition disgusts me in general,” screams Quarter the Villain’s lead vocal dude at the beginning of “Choking A Sloth.” There are enough different vocal styles on the Orlando band’s recent EP, Regicide, to suggest he’s just playing one role of many in some tech-death multiple personality fantasia. But that phrase does a fine job of summing up Quarter the Villain’s music. Everything about this EP feels maxed-out and deliberately challenging. Stop-on-a-dime arrangements interrupt blastbeat sections with waltzes. Squiggly bass lines dry-hump deathcore chugs. Epic keyboard arpeggios, time-signature fuckery, frantic guitar filigree like good ol’ Dillinger used to make. “Choking A Sloth” even quotes the Super Mario Bros. underworld theme. This EP finds the uncomfortable spot where über-serious brutality meets ultimate dweebiness.

If Quarter the Villain’s song structures are, as they claim, informed by 20th century classical composition techniques, I’m not hearing any of it. There’s a lot more of Psyopus’s noodle-tapping than Schoenbergian serialism on Regicide, more of Cephalic Carnage’s silly subgenre grab-bag than John Cage’s aleatoric writing. QtV shares with Psyopus and (early) Cephalic a tendency to smother the many blindingly cool segments with an overall disregard for traditional songcraft. Quarter the Villain’s change-ups whiz by as relentlessly as Hate Eternal’s blastbeats; any structural ingenuity they display tends to be steamrolled over by the ping-pong wackiness of the whole.

But you know what? Good for them. Quarter the Villain have different aims than most bands, and deserve to be treated on their own terms. For sheer bugeyed freakishness, Quarter the Villain have few peers; they fully deserve the oom-pah carnival music that finishes off “Sock Puppet Vendetta.” You may listen to Regicide once and be done with it. But what a show.

Quarter the Villain, “Sock Puppet Vendetta”

(3 horns up out of 5)

-SR

Get Quarter the Villain’s Regicide here. Find our more about the band here.