Inkwell / The Hal Al Shedad split 7"

Inkwell / The Hal Al Shedad split 7"

"I wasn’t too impressed with the Hal Al Shedad’s track on the Tree 7″ with Rainer Maria, but that was a long time ago when I last listened to that, so I decided my tastes might have changed a bit since then and decided to pick this up. Each band has two songs.

First up, the Shedad. They do the quirky, off-kilter emo post-hardcore thing, at times jittery and rhythmical, with flustered vocals and aggressive, pulsing guitars. Their second song on here “Atrophic Revolutions” is the better of the two, really rather good. I think I get this band now. There’s a bit of Nation of Ulysses to the sound, but only in the idea of doing something different with noisy yet structured guitars.

Inkwell are doing the speeding, screaming, emo hardcore thing. There is a picture of the band, and the singer, Philip, is writhing on the floor. I can imagine that. The piece of paper describes the band and says “Philip Dwyer falls down a lot”. It’s also helpful that they included their political/personal lyrics on this as you can barely make out a word. I’ve heard heard this style of music before, but I like what Inkwell are doing here, it’s cool. From bits and pieces I’ve read, I guess it’s been done elsewhere already, but I just haven’t heard any of it." - Andy Malcolm