Artist: Natural Law
Album: Spring Trash
Release: 2010
Label: Self-Released
Tracklist:
1. Cheap Blood
2. Scholarship
3. Cold Comfort
4. Loss Of Freedom
In the realm of political theory, natural law is the theoretical antithesis of nomos. Or so I'm told. Instead of offering some sort of insightful commentary or cool allegory that ties these two political concepts to the bands named after them, and, in effect, writing a cleverer-than-thou blog entry, I'm going to pretend none of this really happened and curse myself for majoring in cinema studies. [Note: for clarity sake: to be precise, nomos and natural law not exactly antithetical, as nomos is an ancient concept (though re-appropriated in various contexts since then) and natural law theory is largely modern. but within the ancient greek understanding nomos (law, convention) is always opposed to physis (nature) and hence the notion of 'natural law' is paradoxical.]
Natural Law hails from NY/NJ and have dropped their first demo, Spring Trash, on an unsuspecting world. The band plays a brand of straightforward, dissonant hardcore, alternating between blistering ragers and straight-up stompers. The vocals are interesting in that they sound like the bastard offspring of the tough vocals of Blank Stare's frontman and the snottiness of Deep Wound's frontchild. They're not too sassy and have an element of nerd-warbling that I'm totally into it.
"Cheap Blood" introduces the band perfectly and is their fastest and most frantic song here. To continue with the unfortunate college motif of this review, the next track is "Scholarship." This is the band's most stompin' song, even if it is probably just about good grades and Halo. Does the title make it a nerd stomper? Yes. "Cold Comfort" is another fast song and is probably my least favorite thing here. It's not bad by any means, just pretty unremarkable. The band makes up for it with "Loss Of Freedom," though, which proves the band knows how to write some slower jams. Instead of bludgeoning the listener in the same ways as "Scholarship," it sounds more methodical, with a slight late-era Black Flag thing going on with the guitars.
Rambling about individual songs aside, this is a great demo. It's by no means perfect and I think it could benefit from some more diversity in the riffage, but overall this is a really cool demo and I highly encourage you to download it. If you live in the NYC area, the band is playing two shows in the near future: May 24th with School Jerks, Pollution, White Guilt, and Crazy Spirit, as well as June 10th with Pollution, White Lung, Ecoli, and Migraine. You can pick up your demos there. If you're lucky enough to live elsewhere, be sure to order them from the link below!
2 BUY:http://katorgaworks.bigcartel.com/product/natural-law-demo
http://www.mediafire.com/?ddcthky4eiy
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Great review!!
ReplyDeleteI love this demo!!