Over at the label, Ripple Music, we're about to light the fuse on an incendiary bomb of hardcore stoner punk from the Cody Foster Army, C.F.A. I don't really know what to call that brash amalgam of conflicting styles, so lazily I call it stoner-core. Well, if you dig, C.F. A., I just found their ideal touring mates. Whores plow a slightly more doom-esque end of the stoner-core spectrum (if that spectrum even exists) but there's no doubt what we got here: pissed-off and angry, fantastically bottom heavy, fuzzed and blitzed hardcore. Riffs are like stoner injected with steroids, ludes and crank. All at the same time. Vocals vary between intonality and incoherent rage within seconds.
And it's all freaking fantastic.
"Fake Life" kicks off like it could be any downtempo, sludgy stoner, bass-rich and pummelingly heavy. But when the vocals kick in, I know I'm in for something different. You just don't get that kinda anger in stoner. "You love your fake life" he screams as if his entire soul needs purging. Meanwhile, the riff rides the ebb and flow of that slowed down doominess, until the adrenaline explosion of the chorus. "Shower Time" skips the stoner altogether and just leaps right into an angular, agitated scratch of a riff jumping right into hardcore juiciness. Then to mix it up, the real "stoner" riff this time comes in the chorus. If you just took that riff and gave it to another band, you'd call it aggressive, but here it's positively blistering. Meanwhile, they're singing and raging about aphids and ants and I got no fucking idea what he's talking about other than somebody laced his bong with some nasty shit. But it doesn't matter. It's brilliant.
I think I'm missing some songs on my promo, so I don't really know the order and all that's supposed to be here, and normally, I wouldn't even bother reviewing a partial promo, but this is some awesome stuff. "Straight Down" is simply frightening in its rampant roarfest of hardcore and doom-nastiness. Call it stoner with a pulse. I don't know, just call it something and check it out. If you can tolerate some rage in your fuzz, you may dig what these guys are screaming about.
--Racer
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