Tradition dictates that proper hardcore punk should be short and to the point, like a few sharp jabs to the bridge of the nose, and with their third album California’s Trash Talk have distilled that adage into an art-form.
The entire album totals less than twenty minutes but is absolutely unrelenting for every second of its short running time. There’s never any point to take a breath, drums rattle like machine-gun fire and vocalist Lee Spielman barks like a man on the edge of despair. The pace of the music will be familiar to fans of Minor Threat and Bad Brains but the intensity of it has more in common with later hardcore bands like Madball.
The short, snappy songs are so embedded in the tradition of the old hardcore punk that they try to recreate that to criticise them for it seems like missing the point, but sometimes songs could quite comfortably last a little longer than a minute; good ideas are gone and disappear into the distance before there’s even an opportunity to really warm to them. But at other times there’s a fear that the ferocity of the music might be bad for your health, like cigarettes.
That aside, Eyes & Nines makes clear that Trash Talk are an excellent hardcore band, songs like ‘Explode’ and ‘Trudge’ are the most complete examples of their ability but throughout they do their forefathers proud. The frantic nature of the album is unlikely to broaden their appeal beyond people who like hardcore anyway and they’re miles behind label-mates Rolo Tomassi in terms of sophistication and ability but as a hardcore album it’s hard to fault, just a pity there isn’t more of it.
