The Armed
Young & Beautiful
Self-Released
11 October 2011
by Hugh Platt
Let’s keep this intro short. Sod it – let’s make this entire review quick. As long-term readers of Thrash Hits will know by now, The Armed give away all their music for free. They make angry as f*ck punk rock, with a sufficient amount of a mathcore twist and no-surrender attitude to elevate them among the best American bands you’ve probably never heard of. Their new EP, Young & Beautiful, came out today, and it is bloody brilliant – so go and download it now.
With Young & Beautiful already available for free download, it almost feels pointless describing how it sounds when you can go listen to it yourself. I’m only doing so in order to stress just how much I love this EP, and why you owe it to yourself to give this EP the thirteen and a half minutes that it takes to listen to these five song., The Armed have reaffirmed what is it about them that has gotten me raving about them with each and every release. There’s simply no mess, no waste, and no mucking about.
The EP’s title track opens the EP in an eruption of snarling, Dillinger Escape Plan-shaded heat. It’s both a description and a motif that fits well with The Armed for much of Young & Beautiful, sitting as it does just shy of pure discordance thanks to their sly use of sneaky punky melodies to underpin the whole affair. It’s what makes ‘Pushing Daisies’, the EP’s mid-point, one of the more (and there are many) interesting points on the record. I’d call it the closest to a “traditional-sounding” song that The Armed have ever crafted in terms of structure, but I’m worried that people might mistake that for a backhanded compliment. Closest in tone and timbre to Gallows at their most furious, Chris Elkjar and Aaron Jones’ guitar work provides the track with both a driving pace and some powerfully wild background soloing. Opening with the lyrics “I keep a human skull on my desk / Just to let you know that I don’t fuck around” and only growing in menace until it reaches the threatening chorus refrain of “Someone’s gonna die tonight”, it is barking and spiteful and magnificent from start to finish.
Watch The Armed cover ‘Tourettes’ by Nirvana at their EP release show for Young & Beautiful:
Given that Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal (yes, he of Guns N’ Roses) had a hand in the engineering of the EP, and that Converge’s Kurt Ballou returns once again as mixer, Young & Beautiful sounds as slick and as professional as any million-dollar project, and does so without smoothing off the bitter edges that made The Armed’s earlier releases such a treat. And like Common Enemies before it, Young & Beautiful knows exactly when to make its excuses and leave. The EP batters itself to a close with the aptly-titled ‘You Have Died’, with a frustrated an sneering gang-vocal chant of “USA! USA!”, repeating itself over and over again until the song splutters to an abrupt finish. There’s no need for this song to go on one second longer. There’s no need for any more songs right now. The Armed’s work here is done.
6/6
Sounds like: The Dillinger Escape Plan, a smidgen of Gallows around the middle, and rotten soul of Black Flag
Top tracks: Mujahoudini, Pushing Up Daisies, You Have Died
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