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This
is pretty hysterical. And truly, for a band that functioned that
early and in a nascent scene, Boston’s The Huguenot’s sound is
quite innovative. True, there has always been the handful of
sound-breaking bands, but rarely have I heard a group of such
young lads playing with this seemingly dysfunctional approach.
Mostly, I am talking about the guitars, which by the way were
handled by none other than a very young Kurt Ballow (Converge)
and who seems basically obsessed with aimlessly shooting ripe
tiny riffs in all directions and loading the tracks with a
catastrophic sense of upcoming destruction. Sure, The Huguenots
were not the first band to come up with this style, which mostly
sounds like a sort of evolution or better yet, a escape, from
the blunt simplicity of New York hardcore, but stretched and
with the silly macho quotient taken out of the equation.
The
Huguenots, who take their moniker from the members of the
Protestant Reformed French Church who were open critics of the
worship methods of the Catholic church and therefore faced
prosecution, also count among their ranks eventual members of
Piebald and The Explosion (yikes!), which actually lifts the historical
value of this band in perspective. Whatever that may be.
Really, I don’t care. Discography offers sixteen cuts
basically all made from the same cloth, and with the same
scissors and, as is audibly evident, by the same guys. Duh! In
the beginning, Discography is actually quite enthralling,
as the band is hectic and desperate with quick rageful tracks
usually started and finished in less than two minutes. The
formula kicks ass, for a while anyways, with the vocalist
screaming out and mostly deadpan delivery lyrics about what I
guess is whatever the Boston hardcore bands were dealing with
back then. The formula gets old rather quickly, and plain
uniformity of the music eventually replaces the initial
surprisingly effective guitars of Ballow and Co. Proof that too
much of a good thing is never a good idea.
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