Back in October 2013, two great LA hardcore/crust punk bands, Homesick Abortions and Death March, released a five-song split EP. Homesick Abortions contributed three songs, while Death March, which features Rob Aston (aka Skinhead Rob of The Transplants) on lead vocals, contributed two songs.

Homesick Abortions are a four piece crusty, hardcore band where all of the lead vocals are shared by the entire band, including the drummer. A lot of the vocals are high pitched and gravely screams. Of the three songs on their side of this 7-inch the coolest is a track called “Human Resources.” This song starts out with this ominous drumbeat and bass line and soon after the guitar follows the bass line. Then the whole band jumps into a super fast and thrashy verse. The vocals are very shrill and lines are quickly passed off between vocalists. It’s also got pretty brutal lyrics like, “Expected to participate, but never told why/ Expendable, replaceable when something goes awry.” But what makes this song pretty unique is that about half way through it the rhythm slows down considerably and the band that transitions into this instrumental bridge is almost jazz-like. All of the instruments progressively join in: at first the drummer plays only the cymbals, then the bass joins in, and as you can hear the tension slowly rising, the highly distorted guitars join back in with the main riff. One guitar is palm muted, while the other joins in at full blast. As I’m sure you guess, this only gets faster until the song ends.

Of the two songs that are on Death March’s side of the 7-inch, the most interesting is definitely “Don’t Believe Them.” This song is has such a crusty and distorted sound that it begins to lean into thrash metal a bit. There is a wailing guitar intro that is quickly followed by this down pouring of fuzz. A lot of the time the guitar (and the whole band for that matter) follows the rhythm of Rob’s voice. Some of you might be wondering to yourselves if he raps on this EP – he doesn’t. Instead his vocals are moderately deep, but very angry sounding yells. This song too, has some pretty brutal and even thought provoking lyrics like, “They’re saying nothing, garbage at best/ No message in it, it’s simply just a mess.”