Punching Contest CD review
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Local CD review gallery (Metromix)
By Bao Le-Huu
Metromix
Published September 6, 2007

ALBUM: Is My Copilot (Post Records)


On this debut, the tightly coiled explosiveness of Orlando post-hardcore band The Punching Contest strikes a near-perfect balance between technique and impact. Though the complex, mathy movements in their music prove that technicality is something they take seriously, it's never oppressive or over-thought. Furthermore, it's always accompanied by a sense of sheer, visceral force. And it's this hair-trigger volatility and primal stance that truly distinguishes them.

The opener "The Ocean The Oceans" encapsulates all their dynamic splendor brooding passages, foreboding angles and all-out locomotive crashes in one four-minute dose. The sprawling seven and a half minutes of "Fire, Bitches" is a virtual rock opera of fire and tension. Other standouts include the thundering onslaught of "Ninja Enters Room" and the torqued "Unit 01," which lurches between aggressively mathematic sequences and a rumbling metal bounce.

But amid the tight, formidable attack of their music, the fevered barbs of Nick Sprysenski's incendiary voice keep the unleashed fury of their live performance intact on the record. The album's raw excitement lies in its ability to be wrought and wrenching one minute, a pipe-bomb the next. Like a succession of waves threatening to crash in on each other, the full-bore feeling of the record is heightened by the back-to-back, sometimes overlapped tracking of songs, never seeming to allow you to catch your breath. Clocking in at a brief but paint-peeling 33 minutes, these guys don't mess around. It's a feral, thoughtful debut that proves, perhaps more than any other act on the roster, that Post Records is committed to exciting and adventurous music.