TournamentYet another stellar fucking release from Trip Machine Laboratories, who never ceases to amaze me with their varied and eclectic roster. Tournament is from Brooklyn, NY and they play a very versatile blend of hardcore/punk rock. At any given moment, your ears are treated to some late 80's hardcore, 70's rock, 90's post-hardcore, and some noise-indie rock.
Every song on this 5 song EP has its own identity while still tying into the whole. That's not exactly an easy thing to do considering at any given moment you could easily think that it was Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi or even Planes Mistaken For Stars playing on the stereo. In my opinion, these guys weave in all of their influences extremely well. I could understand if some people may think this guys suffer from an identity crisis but to me when I am listening to this album, I know who it is. Their singer is one of the main reasons for this, the guy has a captivating voice that draws you in. He has the uncanny ability of always keeping his identity whether it's some crooning over a more atmospheric moment or bellowing out shout after shout from his gut over spastic post-hardcore.
Four of the five songs don't break 3 minutes with the exception of "Traveler" which is placed right in the middle of the EP. The 5:52 odyssey shows just how capable these guys are as a unit. The song has a really spaced out, 70's feel to it with exceptional use of layering and tones which is really driven home by the recording. The second track "Paid In Full" really caught me by surprise. The song is perhaps the most spastic of the bunch, it starts off in a frenzy and definitely has that post-hardcore feel to it. The song then goes into an 80's Dischord direction with some quick bursts of lead work. They then start to really incorporate the melody and the guitars give the bass room to move about in the mix. Right before the ending of the song this trumpet came in and it was fucking awesome.
Holy shit! I can't even begin to tell you how good this recording is. It fits the band so well it's almost sickening. It has a certain dryness that works wonderfully with the style of writing that these guys implement. The recording isn't pushed to the max, it allows proper room for the bass to move about in the mix and makes the vocals sound just amazing. It almost seems as if the guitars were placed slightly back in the mix and the bass and drums were moved a bit more to the front with the vocals placed right smack in the middle.
The album is printed on a recycled, chipboard slipcase and with simple, yet awesome screen printing. The front cover, as you can see from the image on your top left of this review has what appears to be a samurai swallowing a sword, which is of course bad ass as shit. The inside of the slipcase has some credits printed on the left side with a screen printed lyric sheet to top off a lovely package.
Rating: 4/5
Songs Worthy of Replay: "Traveler" and "Paid In Full"
Synopsis: I knew when I initially got this from Chris over at Trip Machine that this would be something worth listening to, just didn't expect it to be this good! I highly recommend this to anyone that likes good music. There were only 500 of these pressed so get on it while you can!
Tournament MySpace
Trip Machine MySpace
You can purchase this over @ Interpunk.com.
Interpunk.com