Chances are you won’t have heard all that much about Dublin quartet Hands Up Who Wants To Die, unless you happen to frequent a lot of gigs put on by Dublin-based indie label the Richter Collective, or indeed you happen to live beside the Thomas House. Hell, I’m guilty on both counts, but Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo is still my first proper induction to camp Die (no relation to Disney’s Camp Rock).
I know this much – the screamo quartet are affiliated with Cork’s I’ll Eat Your Face, whose 2010 debut Irritant massaged my head the way a spear massages a melon. I’m not exactly expecting humble xylophone ditties on HUWWTD’s debut; rather, I’m hoping they’ll reach their Leeside counterpart’s standards of violent lovliness.
Frankly, I’m pretty chuffed that the Irish grindcore contingent have chosen such austere band names, and that I’ve made it this far without having to discuss anyone called Foetus And Crisp Sandwich or Necrophiling Cabinet.
The album’s title is a marvel in itself – a reference to the grammatical phenomenon that dictates that a sentence with the word ‘buffalo’ repeated any number of times is always correct. But enough about Noam Chomsky’s Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.
There’s plenty to like on this snappy 38-minute debut. ‘Moke’ boasts a killer bassline and the raspy storytelling on opener ‘Sailor’ is ingenious, if not perfectly executed. Vocalist and Richter Collective co-founder Barry Lennon tends to sound shaky when not in full screech mode, but you can’t fault his gusto on lines like ‘Step by step… Row by row’ (‘Fortunado’).
The second half of Buffalo, buffalo… contains the most gold, with powerhouse track ‘Vergessen’ swerving masterfully between timid guitar-based instrumental and all-out shriek rock. ‘Stopwatch’ has a faultless stomp and ‘The Scorpion Crawls’ is sinister without being venomous.
HUWWTD have come up with some hard-hitting lyrics, too, the most affecting of which appears on plodding riot ‘Buggy Sandmice’ (“The Egyptians built pyramids to praise their gods/ We built shops to praise their laws”).
There’s no two ways about it – Buffalo, buffalo... is a brute of a record. Clumsy and loutish in all the right ways, but also intelligently written and overflowing with heart.