Tight and taut, delivered at neck-breaking speed, and detonated with a great recording that front and centers the drums without expense to the rest of the music. Leeds’ ONA SNOP’s debut LP follows several split EPs with a blistering eighteen tracks of chaotically controlled thrash. A blender on pulse of INTENSE DEGREE-styled quick spurts of rabid hardcore, SPAZZ-esque vocal trade offs, stop-start with brute grind style pummeling, and quick rockin’ to weird passages bending on sharp turns before hammering back within seconds into more unrelenting throttle. Songs are short, sharp, but shock with their complexity, played expertly to navigate their quick and oddball turns. Maybe it’s a lack of cross-cultural literacy, maybe it’s a lack of cross-generational literacy, but the LP cover has a cartoonish full-color collage of pastel drawings of celebrities’ heads: Amy Winehouse, Mr. T, Geezer Butler, Sporty Spice…and then a lot of people who I have no fucking clue who they are or why they are important. Dr. Who? Someone from EAST ENDERS? The guy at their local pub? Rudy Guiliani? No clue, no reference. Maybe that inanity is the point, and since PLUTOCRACY and later SPAZZ (or, I guess even before, with SNFU or the STUPIDS), it’s not out of line to have the artwork and lyrics be weird cultural mash-ups and pop culture piss-takes, but this eyesore makes me actually miss the days when the artwork and vision for this kind of music was just raw black ’n’ white brutality of decapitated heads and bifurcated dicks. Sgt. Pepper’s influence aside, that onus for more brute visuals might be out of place for a band that sings stream-of-consciousness musings about BLACK SABBATH disintegrating into zombies, their love of mustard, watching football, hating CDs, and other kookiness. Luckily, the music here is so completely raging that it rises above any visual and lyrical misgivings, and this thick platter is a refreshing blast of fastcore mayhem. Speed freaks take note.
