Eyes Have It Eyes Have It cassette
Hard to parse this cassette—some kind of unholy amalgam of black metal and discordant mathcore. Functionally very tight and well-executed, but somehow this entire release is very disjointed. The songs, even when uptempo, are plodding and anguished. I’m reminded of RASPBERRY BULBS, though EYES HAVE IT trade away the conventions of songwriting for a busyness that makes the riffs opaque and ambiguous. This is challenging music by design and without clear signposts the listener can get lost in the sonic wilderness. The two elements that are in most direct conflict are the vocals and the drums. I’m not sure if it’s a production issue with how it’s mixed or something inherent to the performance, but it’s as if they are both vying for the spotlight, which results in the guitar work washing out almost entirely. And my final gripe: this has very little relevance to punk. Like, I wouldn’t think of this as being punk-adjacent. Maybe there’s something here for the black metal crowd, but I hear many of those people are, uh, purists…so, I dunno.