EP Review: Ape Unit - Sticks
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
You know that bit in Full Metal Jacket when the sergeant demands to see a recruit’s “war face”? Good grindcore should command the same of you. There should be a need to scream your lungs out, to engage in unrestrained, gratuitous violence the second the blastbeats hit. That’s the standard I apply whenever I’m reviewing a grind release – less a checklist of attributes to be scored, but a more basic, primitive criteria that boils down to a single question: “does this make me want to break shit”? I cannot listen to last year’s Sulfuric Cautery or Barren Path releases while driving for I am an impulsive creature, and I do not trust myself to defy the urge to begin plowing through solid objects. Now the same is to be asked of Italy’s own Ape Unit. So; how safe is the world when you listen to this?
Some bands mete out intensity through relentless punishment; Ape Unit do it via a jittery, spasmodic approach to rhythms, twitching between tempos and metres in an 11 minute bout of frantic heart arrhythmia. It’s flighty and hyperactive, as boundlessly energetic as a toddler shot full of raw cane sugar. But this strain of barely-controlled chaos takes skill to unleash – skill that Ape Unit have in abundance. They’re tight, burying you beneath a vicious allostatic load comprised of endless facets all clicked into place with molecular precision. At it’s best it feels something like a mathcore progenitor accelerated to eyewatering speeds, something like Botch or Cave In gnawing through crack rocks for breakfast instead of corn flakes. Tracks like “Where the Smile Lives” smear a malformed death/thrash grease into the cyclone, bolstered by an erratic mania spree of harsh vocal approaches used with fantastic effect throughout. The obligatory zany samples rear their demented heads throughout, yet are never so long as to feel like padding or a diversion from the bug eyed lunacy of the actual music itself. Despite the dwarven shortness Ape Unit are working within, the band still find time to dabble in different tones and textures - “Plower Rangers” featuring a curious bass (I think) effect that makes it sound like something between an Atari 2600 and a mallard rap battle, which is explored further on “Old Style Garibuya”. And speaking of which...
Really, the only thing I don’t care for is “Old Style Garibuya” – a needless bit of fx-pedal meddling that snaps the album’s flow like an advert break. It’s longer than every other song for one thing, yet feels aimless despite that and adds almost nothing for it’s relatively drawn out runtime. It’s not as though the release is lengthy enough to warrant a breather even given it’s hurtling pace, and while there’s possibly an argument to be made that it fits with the band’s penchant for taking the piss a bit, I still wouldn’t miss this one if it fell off the tracklist. But at the risk of making something of a mountain out of a molehill, it is after all just one track, and what’s more it’s one track sandwiched between hulking slabs of schizophrenic grind that otherwise ensnares your attention from the jump. When a “Withnail and I” clip heralds a siege of blastbeat-propelled atonal chords bolting up and down the strings only to swanton bomb into a histrionic Voivod-in-a-veyron riff on “Lieutenant Tennents” a few fleeting minutes away, then it’s hard to begrudge a singular stumble out of the whole set.
It’s fortunate that this release is only eleven minutes because I do not think I could suppress my urge to kill again for much longer. It’s solitary misfire aside, Ape Unit’s nervous breakdown of a grind attack is exactly the adrenaline shot I needed. It might be my ADHD, but god damn if this album doesn’t just hammer the button in my brain marked “Dopamine” over and over again. I hope and pray that they go for a full-length next – ideally sans the interlude – but whatever shape a followup of this neurotic, skittish glory takes, it will have my undivided interest.
