Oak
Your Mess As Much As Mine
(Truthseeker / Hydrogen Man / State of Mind)
With only five songs, the EP Your Mess As Much As Mine feels like a tease for the musical array of what Sweden’s Oak can offer. Exploring the encrusted junction between traditional hardcore, punk rock and speed metal, their follow up to 2014’s self-titled release is like a quick jab when you’re aching for a proper punch in the mouth.
Maybe I’m angrier now than I’ve ever been. Maybe I know what it is that pisses me off. I don’t know, but Oak screams at the void in a way that I find satisfying. On the first track, the two-minute “Broken Bodied” the band rips off into metal guitar riffs with their vocals already out of breath and van ride weary, and from there the bleak tone continues, getting deeper and more volatile as the EP progresses; by the time the last track, “Family And Friends” crashes over off its massive intro, there is an all out personality holocaust on hand and you feel like you’ve stumbled in and out of a crisis.
The band proves their ambitions worthy, spilling limitless hardcore energy out, in some places forming four and six minute songs. They’re successful in this by making use of interesting progressions and clever song writing. Often they back screamo lyrics with chippy indictments that are thrown hither and yon in a husky voice.
With their self-titled debut clocking in at ten tracks, the promise of Your Mess As Much As Mine feels just slightly out of grasp. It’s the kind of record that leaves you wanting more of everything. There’s a hell of a lot more, but as a get-me-over release to the next time these three savage Swedes get up the ire to record that next full length, I’m all in.
Purchase the album here: Truthseeker | Hydrogen Man | State of Mind
