Quick, Easy and Painful
Charging like a bull on an adrenaline overdose, Saboteur rips through seven songs in less than 20 minutes, leaving a trail of bodies and bleeding ear drums in their wake. On their debut EP Saboteur, the band launches an aural assault, never letting the listener truly pause to take a breath.With boundless energy, the band plays seven songs jam-packed with enough anger and riffs to get one moving, but enough tight grooves to keep one jamming. Every song on the EP sounds like Motorhead if Lemmy did less speed. Balancing and shifting back and forth from blasts of speed-metal-sounding punk and rollicking drum and bass grooves, the album is tight, never overreaching. The EP never grows boring or hackneyed, but rather allows the music to come through like a Jolt at one in the morning. One more song would force this disc into excess or worse, monotony, but Saboteur keeps everything lean.
The most curious of the tracks (ironically, the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest) is “Declaration on Dependence Drive.” Casual listeners will almost immediately place it as a rip-off of Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows.” However it lacks the Queens’ pure power, instead replaced by a more meandering solo that, while not mind-blowing or innovative, is still quite fun.
The biggest complaint that could be mustered is in the production values. Rarely do the drums or the bass come through with the power of the guitars and the vocals strain to be heard over the riffs. Considering the absolute lack of a true budget, the production is, at the least, forgivable.
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