[REVIEW] STANDOVER (NZ) - ‘…When A Clenched Fist Is No Longer An Option’ LP.
Words: Brady
Sigh. I always feel like my New Zealand reviews start off with similar sentiments, to the point it becomes a trope.
As an Australian, though, it’s important and bears repeating.
Like, okay, your turn - those of you not residing in Aoetoroa, when you see the nation’s name, what first comes to mind? Hobbiton? An accent similar to South Africans where all the vowels seem swapped around on the verbal fridge-magnet? Beautiful vistas and wonderful scenery? Leaving your scooter outside the dairy, nek minnit? Beached as?
Sure, Kiwi culture is marginally those things, and hugely about the incredible geography that’s drawing more and more of the worlds’ elite to its’ climes; it seems to have become a recent darling of Silicon Valley expats, particularly.
Dig beneath the surface, though, and you’ll soon see why it is that ‘mate, farken half of New Zealand seems to live here’ (particularly a comment I heard a lot living in South-East QLD - unsurprising, The GC is a thing - why, I’ll never nu, bru). An economy in perpetual fragility, deep-seated challenges with national identity amidst an unyielding swarm of tourists traipsing about the place, and a lot of complex social issues that are less sexy for tourism boards to advertise globally.
In much similar vein to the high rate of quality heavy music output over here in Australia, my hypothesis is bands like Standover exist as part of a collective yearning to break through the shrouded, overcast veil of literal and metaphorical fog and scream, stomp, expound some emotions that otherwise get blown away with Wellington’s relentless blustering.
I’ll be completely upfront about this band and this review, essentially giving you the conclusion from the outset.
We post a lot of chin-stroking, experimental and otherwise pseudo-intellectual-ready bands, here. And while that’s important, sometimes I get the urge to listen to, promote and otherwise rep bands who clearly actually give little shit about that.
Standover’s ‘…when a clenched fist is no longer an option’ (LP title isn’t capitalised) clearly couldn’t give two shakes of a lamb’s tail from the back of Footrot Flats (get comic-cultured) whether you like metallic-hardcore or not. They clearly aren’t invested in the progressive-metal arms-race, nor quizzical ponderings from those propping up a copy of Catcher In The Rye in a Brunswick bar, desperately hoping that hot chick in the Neutral Milk Hotel shirt catches their eye. Thank. Fuck.
Nah, cuzzie.
This ain’t it, chief.
Like the tectonic plates forever rupturing underneath their feet, these Kiwi metalcore bruisers have a simple, direct throughput in terms of musical aesthetic. Not to say that’s bad - heck, before I drill into the stereotypical track-by-track analysis, what leads me to draw positive conclusions from this album is a combination of raw, street-ready brutishness and sincerity one might not feel as viscerally from the latest Tomb Mold clones.
Heck, this album is pandering to all of the metallic-hardcore tropes from the wonder-years of caustic late-90’s/early-00’s canon, a time where metalcore was frankly unsafe and lowbrow before NWOAHM polished the whole mess up.
As a complete fucking edgelord writing the final blog draft to Last Days of Humanity, Fuck…I’m Dead and all other nasty stuff, I’ll unsnub the metalhead nose at these guys and claim with sincerity that this album is brutal. Brutal, in the pure, uncut, Colombian black-tar way which can only really be explained via sincerely barbaric hardcore.
Take opener ‘Gloom’, for example (here’s that iconic track-by-track you were after!). Meandering in with an off-kilter and frankly unsettling, discordant industrial undertone, even the smooth melodeathian (? brand new sentence, Brady?) leads reek of bitterness, despair and discomfort.
By the time Vasely Sapunov and Luke Weston are done tantalising mid-track and the sub-basement-level chugs hit, Rhys ‘xcrowdslayerx’ Owen (love that nickname unironically; we are CORE-ing baby) roars in with a ferocity that just reeks of a chilli-bin being kicked single-foot through the air, tinnies of Speight’s flying askew, folks scattering and saying “Aw shit bru, watch out for the puss, ya dick-hid!” [Kiwi-phonetics to English: “I am most displeased with your lack of spatial awareness and disorganisation of our compiled beverages, brother”].
Bru (bro) is pissed. A semi-monotone growling rasp-bark-shout not unlike heck, Klas Rydberg/Johannes Persson of Cult of Luna - unsurprising, given their tutelage in Swedish hardcore band Eclipse prior to post-metal. Back-ending the throaty rumble that is our dog-in-a-WWII-air-raid-shelter vocalist are bassist Mikey Shields and drummer Jason Gascoigne, mandated by some court of public opinion somewhere to deliver their rhythmic goods in that classically hardcore-band distortion-and-fuzz-laden squall. Heck, it might just be production values but it works.
It works, after so many years of squeaky-clean hardcore, and bright sparkly UNFD stuff that I’m not abjectly against, but frankly sick of. So, as the tempo cranks up a notch and xcrowdslayerx over here barks refrains not unfamiliar to scene-kids (“Memories! Haunting Me!” - your usual Tuesday afternoon depressive tropes), we’re tipped over a palm-muted waterfall to Rhys barking “FOREVER!” with a ferocity that some fuckin’ kid in a pastel-coloured shirt doing ‘rough’ vocals atop Periphery-esque djent-core couldn’t hope to muster.
I sound like a millenial-Boomer already, and I care fuckin’ naught for it. I mean, guys - they have a release on Bandcamp called NO SPACE IS SAFE, with this as the bio:
What do you want - AxeFX II and some clean choruses? Fuck outta here kid, destroyalllines is that way. No hate, no shade, but we’re playing streets of New Zealand right now. Stick around and listen if you want it tried-and-true, or go tune your 7-string to A Standard. Or something.
Neither Standover nor myself have the time, frankly. Which raises a huge positive about this album in the context of modern metalcore/hardcore - short, sharp, songs! Oh, Sam Neil’s hilarious performance in Event Horizon be praised! ‘The Noose’ is just as shlock-horror as said we-have-40k-at-home cult-classic - gritty, grimy, brutal, fast. Peeling sheets of rust-caked, probably-radioactive-riffage torn shamelessly straight out of the Himsa/Merauder/All Out War playbook, our frontman barks “Fuck the sentiment!”, with the most Architects-ready “bleeeugh!” you’ve come to know and expect.
What? Whaddya-want, chat? Progressive spacefaring tech-death-prog? Be patient, it’s me - you know there’s heaps of that coming.
Back to the core. Back to basics. Basics, only in terms of genre expectations; this stuff is above-average in the actual riff-work and musical delivery. Breakdowns seem like Neanderthal-behaviour to prissy metal-kids trying to out-wank each other on Metal-Archives for Most Knowledgeable, but those fuckers will be like a goddamn truck with the turn-on-a-dime ferocity that that slamming, second-track breakdown leans in for a third gut-punch with ‘Doomed’.
Call Andrew Callaghan, cause this stuff is All Gas, No Brakes. Bro’s have been downing a few L&P’s and are hopped up on sugary energy, but don’t let the whimsical, very-much-no-frills metalcore power-chord intro to this track have you resting on your laurels with aforementioned soft drink. Foregoing the top-two-frets metalcore bounciness of the prior track, the brutes knuckle down and just straight shoulder-charge with a punk-rock energy delivered in a fast, knocking bout. I’ll also point out that they’ve got their finger on the pulse here; the chunkier helpings of chugga-chugga feel tactically-placed so as to not overdo it on In-Flames’-hideously-crust-punk-cousin riff-work template of the prior two.
Breezing through the ‘longest’ track on the album at 3min 48 seconds, I feel like I’m listening to Kiwi Terror - if they also beat the shit out of one of us metal nerds and took our Slayer riffs.
Handing those time-tested library books back into the bank of metal, ‘Off The Leash’ both mixes things up and keeps it xXTRUE_HARDCOREXx, introducing staccato dynamicism that is both well-worn tyre-treads and their own rhythmic bowl of chop. I don’t need to expound on the track, which is essentially ‘previous track but faster’, but it’s punctuated with many of Jason’s clever uses of the kit’s top-end to accentuate the thick and time-tested metalcore riffage. Seriously, some really nice use of fills throughout this album. As a bassist, I get a little Justice-for-Jason-minded for our mate Mikey. But then, I’m reminded I just spent weeks caning the absolute heck out of Atheist post gig-review, and am reminded not every bassist needs or even wants to be as busy arpeggiating and shredding everything. Try that on a bass sometime guitarists, but no whining about your widdle hands being hurties ( :( emoji for emphasis).
Said track has the most local-matinee “It’s time to fuck it up” clarion-call, into nothin’ but chug for the songs’ reprise. Oh, you wanted what, post-rock? A thoughtful treatise on augmented chords? Buddy, you’re really in the wrong review, go look at 99% of anything else I’ve ever reviewed or posted here.
Me, I’m vibing, dude. I feel refreshed. It’s nice, actually, so even the again-unsettling ‘Interlude’ waltzes in with a frankly near-doom-metal vibe with some sampled quotations, I’m caught realising “damn; this is morbid enough to be a passage off a Mithras album”. I’m reminded for the trillionth time why I’m happy to place my feet across metal and hardcore camps, and that sonic brutality doesn’t just mean 110bpm and medical-dictionary song-titles.
Hang onto that point for a second, too. On the bright, sunshiney-day production and songwriting in metalcore of late? No wonder a lot of us scene-kids feel abjectly relieved we’ve got our own nasties in the local scene (big shoutouts to Melting, Nicolas Cage Fighter and others in Vic - you dudes need to tour with Standover!).
Praise Jacinta Arden or something, it’s. Just. Good. Metallic. Hardcore.
‘Watch It All’ leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, a mid-tempo rollicking intro that you know is purpose-built for a brief speech about the scene, wanting kids to fuck it up, You Damn Kids and Your Steps-Coded Two-Stepping, etc. It’s fast, it’s by-the-numbers, but also (like every other track on here) betrays it’s own statistical average with some tasty guitar trills, drum fills and sack-flick bass notes that keep it above cookie-cutter. All dismally grimy in its’ tonal flavour. Heck, we’ve even got the Stay-Gold-opener (for reference, a venue that cops lots of ‘core bills over here in Victoria’s New-Zealand-weather-capital) styled verbal call/response of screams and spoken word.
But then, wait up. Hold the hoki-shaped phone, pull that endangered flightless bird back a (nek)minute. Is that a smooth, tasty, bluesy solo?! Huh, nice.
[Not pictured: A guy who looks, acts and talks like me in an Anata shirt, swirling a craft beer and nasally whining “least they put a solo in, hmph.”]
post-script - fuck that guy, I’m not here for him. I’m here to laugh my arse off at the sampled clip of some Kiwi politician dithering about (sorry guys, I’m sure you regularly pull a laugh doing your best Paul Hogan Aussie version too) and then getting smacked in the jaw for my jeerful Kiwi-racism.
Killed, even, as we swing hard into ‘End You’ (Side note, let’s see how this review plays out with automoderation - legal disclaimer, it’s metaphorical, bots!). Chugging palm-mutes bordering on tremolo speed make my helplessly death/thrash addicted monkey-brain happy, and the rise past more bluesy licks into a ‘solo’ that is pure isolated guitar just going absolutely munt [Translation: “mint, a term indicating quality”; shoutout to The Mint Chicks (RIP? Come back?! Please?!)] on a tremolo run. Fucks nowhere to be found or given for metalheads desperate for augmented-this, jazz-fusion that. Nice. Respect, bro.
“Nothing left of you!”, “Just a vague memory!”, etc, are some of the lyrical refrains. Yeah, it’s 1999 Corey Taylor to the (hard)core but, for the billionth time - what were you expecting otherwise? I don’t review metalcore bands and surprised when they pull these out the kitchen-drawer. Ironically, cry harder somewhere else if it’s an issue.
These guys are too busy just sucker-punching you throughout, with the majority of aforementioned tracks never hitting the two/two and a half minute mark. My incurable inattentive-type ADHD, inner scene-kid and outer grindcore crust punk are all happy. Shrug.
‘Forever Contempt’ could cop some irritable calls from Parkway Drive circa 2006, if they weren’t off busy plying a more Motley Crue version of their own admittedly by-the-template early core. I enjoy the fact that this track has a cognitive dissonance between riffs feeling like they want to hurry the pace, right alongside a rhythm-section taking their own time drag a tempo-cigarette. I can almost feel Luke, Vasely and Rhys all gritting teeth with frustration, but complying with the real engine-drivers of any band. That’s cool. No comment at this point on the riffage - it’s metalcore and above-average in execution of exactly what you’d expect.
‘Dead To Me’ provides some relief to said tension, settling into similar consistency one feels at moments through their six-month journey on a leaky boat. Rocking through the wilderness indeed, but with a d-beat flavour that hearkens Melburnians Resistance (fans of the current band, go peep those dudes), Discharge, etc. Ooh, Brady likes! There’s some near death-metal tempo tremolo and riff-run snarl that gives Old Mate xcrowdslayerx a new dimension of heaviness, and I can’t help but feel this guy shouldnt even be allowed in an extreme-metal band for risk of breaking physical law. Seriously gnarly stuff.
Lastly, ‘Slave’ does exactly what most bands do ever in every genre on their closing track - i.e…. sigh, you know the drill, dudes. Encompassing all the past elements of prior songs into a nicely-bookended final hurrah, demonstrating their musical spectrum wholesale, et cetera. Playing just ahead of the legislatively-required, scene-elder-imposed metallic-hardcore pace, there’s plenty of interesting melding of what’s now being realised as a pretty diverse subgenre soup overall.
Then, it’s done. No bullshit, no fanfare.
You just got whacked in the face with a brick for 24 minutes and 12 seconds, with a ferocity that only someone who’s nearly been in dust-ups with a pissed-off Kiwi will understand.
It’s not all Hobbits, scenic drives and Ulcerate.
Standover won’t pretend to be a musical delivery of neural-network-shattering lysergic acid diethamylide.
Do they care? Pfft, don’t think so. I certainly don’t.
Solid unit of an LP from solid Kiwis, who’ve now got my interest piqued into a further dig into the NZ scene at present. Job done, done well too.
Churr bro, keep those LP’s coming, and come show us Aussies we’re not as tough as our bogan facade belies. Metalheads especially - give us some live beatings, show us for what-for and head home again.
Peace, Love and Pretence-Free, Unrefined Huffable Metallic Hardcore, xoxo - Brady.
psst. p.s. album’s out now - I’ve been hindered aplenty by administrative duties and ergo unfortunately a bit late in the piece getting this badboy out.
Ah well, I haven’t minced words. LP is out now, get bashed in the sternum and called a goddamn metal-nerd, streaming link right here:
p.p.s. shoutout to my IRL Kiwi-cuzzies Adam and Grant. They’ll never read this, but they’re just as funny as every other Kiwi I’ve ever met. Seriously. Chat to a Kiwi, they’re some of the funniest people on the planet. They’ll run rings around your American humour anyday.
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