Album Review: +\- (plus\minus) - +\- EP

+\- are a Ukrainian mathcore band from Kiev. Quite how this has landed into my inbox I will probably never or understand but having found a number of awesome bands in my travels, hailing from far flung countries across the world, proving that to be a good band you do not have to be from the States or the UK, I tune in with excitement and intrigue.

These songs are fast, very fast Before I know it I’m on track 3 and I have to skip back to start again. Not only is does this band play ferociously fast, they blow my mind with their intense heaviness!

The EP begins with a spooky spoken word intro with messages copy and pasted from various languages, I like it when bands do this although it is probably becoming slightly overdone.

Then the music starts…it’s a controlled mess of double kick drum, scatty guitars and piercing screams and growls. They play well and I think fans of this music might be impressed, they definitely show some talent. These songs are short, no quicker has it started do we enter into track number 3…

The third track, 'Уйти Навсегда' is much the same only this time they inject a (small) bit of melody into the mix, which for me makes things much more interesting and engaging. This is the longest song on the EP at only 3 minutes 20 seconds but it still manages to fit in more time changes that most bands manage in an entire album.

'Нет Больше Сил' clocks in at just over a minute and is much of the same as we’ve had from previous tracks. Infact I wonder if they could make this EP just one long track, it would still only be only 7 minutes long! Things are starting to get repetitive for me, I prefer a bit of variance in my music!

+\- are good at what they do, they seem to be doing well in the Ukraine and are desperately trying to gage attention and expand further west. They play really f***ing heavy mathcore metal that will blow your speakers. However it has not got enough substance to keep my attention personally but if this is your type of thing then its worth checking out.

2/5

+\- (plus/minus) EP by +\- is available now on Moon Records

+\- on Myspace
Official +\- Blog

Matt Buck