SBPU are, as of this review, signed to the mighty Sevared Records which means that they don't even need our fucking help at all! But, we'll do them a favor (a late one, however) and review this actually quite strong promo.

Short Bus Pile Up may have a dumb name (which they should change, but whatever), but they began as goofy cybergrind that didn't take itself seriously and, indeed, they even claimed it as a joke project. It seems that some time in 2008 they started to become more serious and changed style to slam, which they continue with on this release.

"Gagging on Dick", the very lovely first track, begins with a lame sample and launches into surprisingly chunky, meaty slamming riffs with one of the fucking best snare sounds in slam that I've heard recently. It's up-front, pingy, reverbed and just generally awesome. It makes the slams (which are written quite well and structured equally tactfully) that much more satisfying. Track 2, "Fecal Matters" features more discernible vocals (though they're still basically incomprehensible) and a really great bass-bomb-to-slam section in the middle after a lame sample (stop doing this!!). I had my own doubts about this promo, to be honest, but they have been allayed quite well by the material here. The best titled track here has one of the best sections, this being the third one, "FUBAR (Felt Up By A Retard)" which has a stop-start-ish riff which reminds of general modern death metal and a rapid-fire vocal delivery slam which rolls the song forward into a recapitulation of the previous section with a minor change-up. The songwriting is kind of unfocused here but the sections written in are often of very high quality and thus I can't really fault them too much.

This promo is 5 songs in under ten minutes, which I find to be a length I like to consider "problematic". Since I mentioned previously that I think their songwriting is shoddy, I have to quickly make an aside to what I feel my greatest point of contention is here; undeveloped slams and underdeveloped songs in general. The band writes better slam than, say, Dysentery or Sexcrement, but, while their slam sections are powerful and kickass and their general creativity is very much alive and well, they don't seem to know how to keep a song going at the same powerful level. I wish these guys would strive to write longer, more developed songs in their same style. That's about my only problem here. Otherwise, great little promo and I look forward to the new one Barrett puts out.

Oh, and if you guys change the snare tone I'll be really angry with you.

That is all.