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  • Fan Death

Following quickly on a late 2009 12", Twin Stumps' latest is a more focused version of the band's grim, grimy, dread-filled post-hardcore.

A new full-length from Twin Stumps already is a surprise, given their recent self-titled 12" came out in only late 2009. It's even more surprising considering that bassist Mike Yaniro was was hospitalized for injuries from a vicious mugging right before its release. That 12" sat on the fringe of blown-out hardcore punk where one dropped beat could mean descending into free noise, and is almost more terrifying for being given a steady pulse. Seedbed isn't a clean-up job or a breakthrough, but it's an even more focused version of the band's grim and grimy hardcore, grinding it out at mid-tempo with an almost untenable level of dread.

When they push the boundaries on fidelity, it's not to sound indistinct or distancing or evoke some lost feeling of nostalgia-- it's to sound more dangerous. Yet their sound isn't tough-guy posturing; as one follows the rhythm section, sludgy and distorted as they may be, the album's internal logic starts to dawn on you-- the basslines of tracks like "Child Republic" and "Drainage City" are as sleek and hypnotic as they are bruising.

The languid low-end and guitar squeals of tracks like "Business Class" or "Pope's Nose", not to mention the tortured vocals, are probably what have earned the band a few comparisons to Pissed Jeans, though the content on Seedbed seems less winking and more wallowing-- a sample lyric from "Pope's Nose" is "You're not the thing that your mother wanted" repeated ad infinitum. But while there's not much of a ring of hope in the band's perspective, there's still a clarity: while the bass is muffled and there's a noise like ball-peen hammers on sheet metal pushing the beat on "Missing Persons", everything the vocalist is shouting is clear ("You might as well/ Every night/ Feel ashamed/ And waste away... choices made"). Twin Stumps are ringing the same sorts of alarm bells: against complacency, against boredom, against not trying-- and the artful pummeling of "Missing Persons" or the claustrophobic buildup of tracks like "Caged Emily" prove they belong in that conversation.

Just as striking as those standouts are the very brief moments of respite, like the sound-collage-like "Pigs at the Trough", gurgling and ominous like hearing like a city being destroyed while hiding in a basement. Even if it only lasts a moment, comparatively, it shows where there's room for a more dynamic approach. When they get a firmer hold on that, Twin Stumps might get truly terrifying.

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