Review Summary: Quality recording by the granddaddies of screamo.
Back when fanzines were the 90’s equivalent to internet blogs and you had to settle drama by sending hatemail to said zines, Southern California was where the subgenre of hardcore now known as screamo was shaped. While DC bands like Rites of Spring help create emo and bands like Heroin and Navio Forge helped bring the style to the West Coast, the Southern California scene is essentially what took the genre and turned it into the tear-dribbling mess that is screamo. This is where Honeywell comes into play.
Honeywell formed in Corona, California in 1991, debuting into the scene the next year with a self-titled EP. That release not only acted as the basis for the band’s sound, but for the entire genre that is screamo. While firmly rooted in “vanilla” hardcore, it featured the sincerity of emo and punk and mixed that with the dissonance of noise rock. It was intimidating and violent, however even that pales in comparison to their follow-up: their sole full-length
Industry.
Industry is a speeding bullet into the psyche of the unsuspecting listener. It gets dangerously close to powerviolence at times, making it the prototype of emoviolence to an extent. Each track is a thick, neverending wall of noise and suffering. Unfiltered, feedback drenched guitars dashing across the aural plane as the shrieks of personified rage infest the area, ruining any good mood you’ve felt before hand, or ever will for that matter. This album infects you so that it becomes one of the only things that will crave your hunger for anguish.
With all that being said, it should always be noted that this kind of intense music should generally be kept short, for if it drags on too long, any feeling that’s been sparked by the music will lose it’s magic. As good as Honeywell are at being pissed, they’re not that good at keeping that pissed-off feeling for a long time. For whatever reason, they felt the need to drag out “Thirtyeight” by tacking on a long, unnecessary sample that completely kills the mood of the song, effectively making it a chore to listen to. They also decided to finish the album off with a weak ending, one that meanders around with drone that goes nowhere.
Anyways, if you’re one of those Wikipedia-types like me that obsess over who’s considered the first at something and whether or not a band needs to be tagged with a “proto-genre” than this is a great listen for discovering the origins to “true skramz”.
