Death Cassette – Get Rid Of It EP

Death Cassette not “death to the cassette” (actually making a resurgence) as I wrongly read it as when I first got this EP to caress my ears with, are a grunge punk band from Canada, Winnipeg to be more precise.  I have to be honest, the only bands that comes to mind from this town are Crash Test Dummies and Personality Crisis, a bit of a mixed bag there then, so to now walk in the footsteps of this illustrious list of bands, DC are giving us a six track EP which follows their album Grim from back in 2020, and a blinder of a debut by the way (yes I went and did some real time research, I do that sometimes).

I have to say that when you start an EP with a song that’s called ‘Storm’ and it features a bass led sound and a vocal that has Brody Dalle written all over it, your on to a huge 5 out of 5 before we go any fucking further (oh yes I do swear when things get this good), in fact the bass is a huge feature of this EP to my ears, it just delivers the beating heart of the songs and gives a sense of darkness, along with Amanda Sousa’s vocal onslaught and a guitar that moves from grunge to moments of psychobilly and spiralling licks, all this backed up by a drum sound that nails it all together, your never left feeling comfortable or let down either.

In all six tracks, the power of the messages and musical angst is never ever far away.  ‘Reflector’ hits home the smugness and self serving that lives far too easily in the world these days, it’s about time we made them all uneasy but with compassion for their affliction, then ‘Trapped’ seems to hit on real demonic thoughts, a kind of fight to get out, which heads straight into ‘Solstice’, a more reflective look at the demons inside and a much more laid back sound too, kind of shoe gazing music that gives you a slap around the head every so often just to remind you to take a look around, not that this band could ever be describe as shoe gazing!.  ‘Leech’ as the last track, has so much more hardcore at its core that the rest of the EP, amps turned up to 11 kind of sums this one up, and then your still fully aware that this is a band that has its heart on its sleeve, but still likes to mix it up with everything that excites them, which for us the listener is such a great thing.

I really hope this review makes perfect sense, if not, then that would fully explain how this EP felt musically, but it did have a “breaking out of the box” with dynamite approach I’d say.  Perfect played very very loud, even better played over and over! 

Out via High End Denim Records on November 17th

Check out the band on Bandcamp & Facebook