I was lucky enough to see Boston's Mind Eraser play here in Cleveland along with Japanese hardcore band, Slang about a year or so ago. The show was intense, and having Mind Eraser wrap it up with their brand of power-violence/hardcore did the trick. They released a split 7" with Slang for that tour, which I highly recommend if you can get your hands on it. Glacial Reign (2006) finds Mind Eraser on top of their game. It's a brutal thrash/speed mixed with crushing and (insert adjective of choice) breakdowns. The album seems to fit in a little closer to the hardcore side of things when considering the power-violence genre, but fret not the speed is still there, and the songs remain short and sweet. The album is twelve songs in just over 22 minutes, so you get the idea. The recording is surprising pretty well done for this style of music. No real complaints here. They're only a few standout songs, though enough catchy riffs and intense chord progressions exist to keep things interesting.
Mind Eraser - "Wrote Off"
The 1:37 song starts off with a full on total rush of guitar, drums, and vocals, and almost as quickly settles into a groove that is moved along slowly by the guitar. The drummer slashing away on a crash. Following a transition through another blitz, a breakdown into one of the catchier riffs on the album, with screamed and called out vocals accenting the shifts.
Mind Eraser - Equation
The shortest song on the album coming in at 45 seconds, demonstrates the band's sound a succinctly as possible. Really about four parts of pure thrash then a busting breakdown with hoarse vocal calls. I like the job done by the drummer, hitting every syllable uttered with an accompanying snare/high-hat/bass drum hit. As with any good hardcore song, the faster you can crank up that early part of the song the harder the chugging tail end feels when it comes.
I highly recommend checking out the song that follows "Equation" on the album, "Full Spectrum Dominance", as it side steps into a pure chugging hardcore reminiscent of something off of a Holy Terror/Integrity album; vehemently dark. I believe that one of the band members runs the label this album was released on, Painkiller Records.
You can find the mp3s of this album here. So no excuses.
