“My head is swollen and my lungs are closing air
You’re sleeping on a bed of broken glass
You’re sleeping on a bed of broken past fuck honesty air”
– The First Half’

Deranged dramatica from these ex-Breather Resist malcontents charting the confused angry convalescence of the brutalized, never mind bereaved, beaten down and boxed in. Whether or not you want to read into their name a reflection of the war in error casualty list it seems inescapable, especially given the anguish and intensity of this churning obsessing abyss of swollen abcesses. With the unceasing clattering of Steve Albini at his most obtuse and the discordant cluster bombed dust cloud of the world at large songs like ‘Almost Dead Beat’ grind through your gut and shake foundations from follicles to your fingertips, ‘Bruised Knees’ is subversively anthemic while the anathema that fuels the album is charged on Evan Pattersons disembowelling guitar gastrionics using strings of high-tensile strip-wire and that’s combined with the angry Silverback picking bogies out of your nose bass assault. Frequently linking songs together ratchets up the industrial accident tension and adds to the whole experience being something like the heightened awareness in times of extreme danger or emotional trauma. As with the best hardcore, this is positive and cathartic, if not an emetic for some unsuspecting citizen out there, and scalped of pious preaching is all the more pertinent. __________________________________________________

-Stu Gibson