Title: Another Minute Made Fiasco
Format Reviewed: MP3
Format Released: 2nd March 2015
Reviewed By: Ben Chapman
Another Minute Made Fiasco is the debut EP from noisy Birmingham quartet Cal Banda. A short but impactive four tracks, each inexplicably nuts: Cut The Kings springs open like it's halfway through already.
The stomping theme has an almost tribal bounce and sense of incantation, where the outright thrashiness hides the carefully layered additions to the main riff, which the listener can't help but imbibe. There's the speedily wild messiness of Dananananaykroyd and the unpredictable melodic temperament of And So I Watch You From Afar, but less messing around, and an altogether heavy sound: refreshingly distant from standard metal, that relies on energetic delivery and outright abrasiveness more than amp tone. The snippets of lyrics that can only just be made out are as humorously wry as they are condemning, also timed cohesively with the instrumental fuzz it steps to, and so the overall feel is a spiky multicolour punch to your pondering jaw. A scribbly guitar melody winds down towards the track's end, before the main riff is suddenly reiterated tenfold alongside a lengthy scream.
Empires continues the band's ability to burst into your room like Cosmo Kramer infected with that virus from 28 Days Later, with every song. A slew of shouts and fiddly guitar parts gather into a rolling mess shepherded together by some versatile drumming. A short break with lurching note bends marks the song's middle, setting up the treatment of an even thrashier triple-metre slog which carries the vocal chords and guitar strings to breaking point.
Red Plastic Cups gets off to another arrestingly shouty start, in perfect rhythm with the guitar, drums, and bass, the music is always busy though beautifully concise. There's plenty of unexpected launches into bizarre rhythms and math-core inspired noodling, yet Cal Banda really excel at taking one constant rhythmic theme and adding all sorts of melodic followers-on for an vast and ambitious song-closer, usually through their layered guitar harmonies and counterpoint bass.
Despite Cal Banda's ever-extreme approach in the final track, Solid Gold will sound like exactly that, not just to fans of the thrash but also a wide range of listeners. There's a definite hook to the song's bold advance met by an oddly accessible feel from the sheer power and refreshingly delivery. The off-balance sway of distorted chords, edgy twang of bent notes, and bubbling scalic runs builds up to Cal Banda's unique form of weird heaviness once more: a loose reduction of metal, punk, noise rock, and equal chunks math-core craziness, until around the one and a half minute mark, where an uplifting guitar melody emerges. The rest of the band follows with suitable ever-heavier re-imaginations of the melodic focus towards the track's impressive close, where many listeners will inevitably start the EP from the top.
This debut effort is encouraging. The release accompanies a 'making of', where the music's tough core works brilliantly alongside the footage: faux-extreme stunts, wherein a kerb is jumped onto and an ankle is pretend-strained; complaints of varying band member's studio arrival times; dropped sandwiches; candidly snuck shots of members caught dancing to their own tunes; false start recordings; hip wiggling. Not only is it an energising and downright thrashy listen but it's also somehow upbeat and genuinely fun to let it batter your ears for a bit.
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