Members of various revered screamo acts converge in Versoma to pay tribute to both noisy and shoegazer acts like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, and it comes out sounding exactly like you can imagine -- which is both an awesome and mildly disappointing thing.

See, among the pedigree Versoma sports (mind the overlapping) are Hot Cross, Saetia, Orchid, and Transistor Transistor (the four biggest names here), which to many surely promises heaps of creativity and talent -- which is certainly there but, unfortunately, it feels like this territory was just tread much more powerfully by the Coma Recovery's stunning debut, Drown That Holy End in Wine, a couple months ago. Make no mistake, though; Life During Wartime offers efficiently noisy, mesmerizing walls of post-hardcore as well, with similarly drowned vocals and the same type of bleak, digging moods the aforementioned My Bloody Valentine first stirred our most entrenched senses with all those years ago. You can especially hear it in the EP's most drawn out track, "November 2004," which the band makes their own with more hopeful, upbeat guitar picking in its lengthy introduction.

It could just be perspective, but I'm not immediately floored by Versoma's compositions -- I'm definitely interested, though, and if they can make this work for an entire full-length's running time, then we'll really be talking. Oh, and memo to Hydra Head Records -- if you guys ever wanted to release a shoegazer album, I think I've got your ticket right here...

STREAM
November 2004
Come in Alone