ROBOTS AND EMPIRE
Omnivore
(Trip Machine)

NYIA/ANTIGAMA
Split
(SelfMadeGod)

BROWN JENKINS
Dagonite
(Moribund)

SLOTH
A Whole Other World of Fun
(At War With False Noise)

CAN KICKERS
Live at Lavazone
(Fistolo)

LOOM
Angler 

(Exigent)

HATER
The 2nd

(Burn Burn Burn)

MORE REVIEWS

I am really digging the first half of this Polish split. Especially the one that belongs to the Olsztyn natives NYIA (this band at one time included a former member of Vader); who make this really progressive and totally fucked in the brain ambient-friendly grindcore. NYIA’s music is of the ilk that after a few seconds doesn’t really come off as too hard or extreme, mostly because their songs are so well-played and technical and because during long passages the boys of NYIA truly sound ahead of time with their fine fingers bending and waxing. So they kind of approximate the playing of a really heavy jazz band. The song that opens (“Of the Will”) for instance, is one of those knee-jerkers that bounces back and forth with funky riffs that go from radically circular to radically rounded in a matter of unnoticeable moments. The vocals are clean with syllables getting elongated at totally despair timing when compared to the music, and it totally serves NYIA well. Rounding up the band’s music to a more acceptable sound; drums careen one way, while the guitars go nuts with angular complexity and the clear vocals, at times clean and at others raw and neurotic, on top. In other words, NYIA’s genre du jour is all you want it to be, as long as it falls between the real of the heavy and the free jazz.

Antigama are a bit more popular. In the States they have seen their latest recordings issued via Relapse records, and they have split plastic sides with bands as well-known and prestigious as Pig Destroyer and Drugs of Faith. Though more crucially extreme and all out balls up front and fists in your face, Antigama executes its share of experimentations. Their three tracks are quite complex displays of atonal riffs, surreally brutal cookie monster growls and polyrhythmic drums. If they have something in common with NYIA is the fact that both bands allow their musicians to venture on their own, apparently regardless of whether the song lends itself to it or not. Occasionally, things do match up like during the constant stop and starts of “ADV”, where the band shows us what indecision means, but for the most part, aside of the links between songs which are quite congruent, Antigama seems also bent on confusing the listener.

Antigama Official Site

Antigama MySpace

NYIA MySpace