Album Review: Kerouac / The Long Haul - Split EP

This record has absolutely no time for formalities. As soon as you press play, The Long Haul are all up in your face without so much as a courtesy chug. It is abrasive, mercilessly volatile, and relentlessly frantic. It is UK hardcore at its finest. This split EP from Southampton-based bands Kerouac and The Long Haul packs the same level of power and detail expected of a full length album into seventeen minutes. With three tracks each, neither band has come to the table wanting to bring the superlatives of hardcore characteristics. Rather than pushing their music to be the heaviest or the fastest, there is a care and intelligence in the arrangements which highlight their impressive capabilities without going over the top.

With Kerouac having more releases under their belt, this EP serves as a platform for The Long Haul to show us what they’ve got, and for Kerouac to show us what more they have to offer. Despite differences in style as well as experience, both bands support each other’s weight equally, strengthening their differing brands of hardcore with neither coming out on top. The Long Haul bring deep, aggressive growls and a penchant for erratic and furious guitar solos. Female vocals on ‘Dead Soul/ Endless Drag’ provide a stark contrast in tone and melody, but the constant driving pace and surrounding chaos holds back any hint of softness. Kerouac are equally aggressive in pace, but the fitful rhythm section applies and releases the breaks, scattering gravel on the comparatively smooth road that The Long Haul have just driven down.

Kerouac conclude the EP with the slow burning ‘Porcelain’, which rages with the same raw ferocity and stomach churning angst that punctuated Converge’s ‘Jane Doe’. Thom Denson, whose vocals lie with Frank Carter’s somewhere between a scream and a cry, drag the song to a halt with the looped lyric “I’m swimming through your veins/ but I’m falling down your face”, delivered with a tangible desperation.

In this easily digestible release, both bands have blown the floodgates wide open; there are no refrains of eerie chord progressions or tension build up’s, just the straight up release of energy born from whatever emotion. There are a great many bands on the UK hardcore scene today, but this EP establishes Kerouac and The Long Haul as two vital driving forces behind a new wave of British hardcore, rolling in fresh from the South shore.

4/5

'Split EP' by Kerouac/The Long Haul is available now on Tangled Talk Records.

Kerouac on Facebook, Bandcamp, Twitter, and Tumblr.
The Long Haul on Facebook and MySpace.

Words by Emma Garland