Review Summary: A good, hard-hitting album to kick off 2022.
From listening to a lot of music from all walks of styles and genres, I can tell you that listening to an album like this one can be a breath of fresh air. A nice, pithy powerhouse that enters the room like a tornado, grabs your complete attention and then dissipates before you’ve even had a chance to ascertain what’s happening.
Productive Disruption is just that; it’s a fervent mix of grind and hardcore punk – a cacophony of distorted barks and intense blast beats, shelled inside an armoury of serrated guitar frequencies and effects. Its raw production sets to embolden its apoplectic disposition, resonating sounds from early Dillinger Escape Plan and Glassjaw. I’ll be honest in saying I’m not the biggest fan of grind, I enjoy some of the venerable names from the genre but generally, the style sounds quite homogenous to me, as songs feel like they’re bleeding into one another after a while. However, the songwriting on
Productive Disruption makes a concerted effort to mix things up quite a lot, whilst staying true to its roots and by maintaining the high-octane character it walked in with. From the swirling guitar riffs on “Catching Flies” and “Public Acid”, to the ferocious speed and impressive screams from Justin Pearson present on “Don’t Forget to Live”; the stomping grooves on “New Voodoo” and “Power of Negative Thinking”, to the weird pockets of respite where “Planet Bombing”, for instance, opens up with a spacey trill guitar effect. I think the record has a good balance of ideas, and it doesn’t sit on one thing for long enough for it to become mundane.
Overall, this debut album from Deaf Club is a thoroughly enjoyable one. If you’re a fan of blistering one-and-a-half-minute grind tunes with a little flair and flavour, this one isn’t to be overlooked. Imagine Dillinger Escape Plan, Glassjaw, and Every Time I Die rolling around in a potato sack and you’ll have some idea of what to expect here. Nevertheless, this myopic band name dropping doesn’t do service to what
Productive Disruption does so well, and by that, I mean the band does a great job of constantly catching you off guard from changing things up. If there were any negatives to be voiced here it’s that
Productive Disruption could have done with a slightly more polished production to make the songs pop and have a more devastating impact. The production here works with the vibe of the album, but with a little more weight behind the drums and guitars, the results could have been cataclysmic. Still, the quality here speaks for itself, and at twenty-three minutes in length this thing isn’t fu*king around. There wasn’t a moment where I felt ennui setting in, and the influences it stands behind are handled with the band’s own distinction in mind. All in all, a great start for heavy music in 2022.
