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Me and Him Call It Us / The Blue Letter - Split EP

Rating

RIYL

Pig Destroyer
Isis
Circle Takes the Square

Tracklist

1. Frostbit
2. Seasick
3. March of the Romans

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Grindcore newcomers Me and Him Call It Us team up with long-established Christian hardcore magnates The Blue Letter on Guevara Entertainment's ninth release. While Me and Him Call It Us's grindcore tracks take up a combined two and a half minutes, The Blue Letter's lone track clocks in at just under seven.

Me and Him Call It Us obviously provide the most devastation for your buck, shredding through their material in unrelenting fashion, roaring, shrieking, and grunting their way through foot-stomping, head-banging, noise-infested, buzzsaw riff-o-ramas, one of which ("Seasick") somehow happens to have time to take a jazz drum interlude. It's a frenetic, energetic two minutes that set the scene for The Blue Letter's latest step in the laborious process of refining and redefining their sound.

For a band whose previous release was a three-track collection that took all of five minutes to play from front to back, it's weird, yet welcome to see the band write songs that run for twice that length. Their drawn-out, nearly Isis-ian transformation has been a wonder to behold over the years, watching the not-featured "The Day the Sun Turned Black" turn from a two-and-a-half minute hardcore song with a dance interlude morph into a twelve-minute opus of staggering proportions, shifting from one style of metal to another, nearing the end before restarting from a new and different vantage point. Of course, little of this has anything to do with their featured track "March of the Romans," except that the track never would have happened had they not begun this distinct transformation.

The opening of the track certainly brings to mind the band's starting point, but within moments gives way to their newer, less straightforward songwriting style. Where once was frenzy and chaos now stands monolithic bass riffs, subdued drumming, and endless waves of feedback-enforced guitarwork, leading to somewhere and nowhere all at once, building not toward crescendo, but toward a complete release of anger, frustration, and pain. It is musical catharsis, spiritual and singular, as Dan and Chad shred their throats to exorcise their demons. Once all has been expelled, the band moves toward their churning, ever-moodier atmospheric post-metal ways, building toward nothing but an end, morphing their sound ever so slightly as they grind toward the end of the track. One could say the name fits, as there are definite battles within "March of the Romans," but with plenty of space for the band simply to travel to their next warzone, to finally reach their homeland, to live as heroes in a world where such people vanish quickly or never come to be at all.

--Ben Rice