“Lowest Hanging Fruit” is the best mix of hardcore, melodic hardcore, metal, and prog-rock you can imagine. “AUX II,” also, melds primal hardcore with prog-rock sensibilities, and features some smooth calm breaks, but includes some violently stabbing guitars. There’s some cool progressive rock guitar licks in “Built On Broken Backs,” a song that’s as melodic as it is crunchy. The dueling vocals are still here, too, with gruff rasping vocals contrasted with higher strung singing. This is very notable at the close of “What I Cannot BE,” which opens the EP. The other four songs demonstrate an incredible amount of creativity for a hardcore band, with amazing rhythmic shifts and powerfully angular guitar riffs. But that’s the sole disappointment of the EP, and a minor quibble at that. The studio version, to my ears, doesn’t match it, sounding a bit too much like typical metallic hardcore.

As expected, the production values of a studio recording create somewhat of a slicker sound, but this is only bothersome on the one song shared between the two records, “Aggro.” The “live” version is raw, powerful, guttural stuff. This is a solid debut that leaves me wanting a US tour and a full-length LP.ĭARKO – Greyscale (Thousand Islands Records, / Lockjaw Records, Hot on the heals of their “Live at Signal House Studios” EP, UK band Darko are back with a new five-song studio EP. The drums pound relentlessly, the guitars fill every open space, the bass creates an unshakable foundation, and the vocals ring out with a sense of anguished pleading. Right from the start, with their song, “Guillotine,” you get the sense that this band doesn’t fuck around. These are sturdy muscular songs, of the same ilk as Chicago punk bands of the 80s like Naked Raygun or The Effigies played, or that bands like Hüsker Dü did in the 80s or Jawbox in the 90s. There are plenty of bands playing “melodic hardcore,” but that generally means they’re playing something metallic or skate punk or something slick and overproduced. The music has plenty of melodic content, but the arrangements are tough and powerful, with impenetrable guitars, bass, and drums, and gruff gritty vocals.

Musically, this stuff hits hard – quite literally. This four-song EP is their recorded debut, being simultaneously released in their native UK by Little Rocket and by Sell the Heart in the US. The four members of Back Teeth, Dave, Lewis, Tom, and Paul, met a scant two years ago at the Punk Rock Holiday festival in Slovenia, and decided to form a band.

BACK TEETH (Sell the Heart Records, / Little Rocket Records, .uk)

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