The Smackdown

Sweden's the Smackdown received a not so delicate panning from this very site while being labeled "[dirty, nasty] screamocore." I'm not entirely sure why it was found to be so outright terrible (maybe the band's super goofy wrestling schtick, it involves pretty much all their lyrics), or so harshly sounding, because in all honesty the Smackdown just sounds like early Blood Brothers as recorded through a garage punk filter (I want to say C.Aarmé, but I can't invest in that 100%).

Really. Take the manic, raw intensity of the Bloods' earliest efforts like This Adultery Is Ripe or the material that made up Rumors Laid Waste, make the edges and recording even rougher, and don't ever, ever let up on said intensity. That's it, really. It's almost like Johnny Whitney wished to start all over again.

There isn't a whole heck of a lot to the Smackdown's sound, but it's not like you can often say "a garage punk Blood Brothers? How many more of those do we need?" Then again, I'm not entirely sure you could say that for the Smackdown. In any event, while the pink and white liner notes with random scraggly notes and paint blotches look, like, totally hip, the music contained within is some damn ballistic, frenetic shit my brothers and sisters. And when you're executing 13 songs in 21 minutes, I guess that's to be expected. I'll probably end up sticking with my Bloods albums, but I wouldn't entirely dismiss this immediately like you may have been caused to in the past.

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