GHOSTLIMB AMPUTATE HEADS WITH BEARING AND DISTANCE
Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it can’t kick your fucking ass. Eighteen and a half minutes after I started listening to their new album Bearing & Distance (Level Plane Records), it ended; so I simply listened to it again.
Through those 18 minutes and the course of 15 tracks — 5 of which are under a minute and the longest of which is 2:08 — California’s Ghostlimb proved that they’re doing something really fucking cool and different. I can’t quite put a finger on their entire palette of influences because there’s a really strong hardcore flavoring, and frankly I just don’t have the musical vocabulary to go there. But fuck it, at the risk of making myself look really stupid and non-versed in the history of punk and hardcore (this is true), I’ll try: Minor Threat, Bad Religion (on coke), Paint It Black, and even NYC’s Wetnurse, but with big, clear production Matt Bayles would be proud of and a whack-you-in-the-nuts metal sensibility that’s also hard to place. Think a faster, non-stop alcohol-fueled Bronx, blending anthemic punk chord progressions through highly overdriven Marshalls and some dude passionately screaming his fucking lungs out on top of it as if he had a fist shoved up his ass and singing these songs was the only way to get it out.
Find out for yourself and check out Ghostlimb on MySpace.
-VN
