Finish Him! 'An Audience With...'
Back in the dark ages (1990 to be exact), when mix tapes were still prolifically exchanged amongst angst-ridden teens and mp3’s and mobile phones were the stuff of some Silicon Valley computer geek’s wet dreams, before Metallica had raped our collective ear holes with the dual-abomination of ‘Load/Reload’, and before a few Black metaller types decided there were just one too many churches dotting the Norwegian landscape so did what any one of us would rationally do and went crazy with some matches and lighter fluid. Yes, before all of this, there was a little thrash (?) metal band hailing from Long Island, New York by the name of Scatterbrain. Now, I don’t expect any of you to have heard of this particular group, for a variety of reasons, the main one being that they were essentially crap. However, they did release an album titled ‘Here Comes Trouble’ featuring a catchy little tune called “Don’t Call Me Dude” which, in spite of the band’s aforementioned crapness, was a stroke of genius. Speaking of, they also used to perform a medley of Mozart mixed with Motorhead during their live shows. ‘Nuff said.
So right about now you may be wondering why the fuck I’m mentioning any of this. Well calm down, I’m getting to that. For reasons unbeknownst even to myself, whilst listening to Finish Him’s ‘An Audience With…’ there were moments when I started having non-chemically induced Scatterbrain flashbacks. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing, it is what it is, but it can’t be denied and I feel I wouldn’t be doing my job as a reviewer if I neglected to at least mention it. My strongest flashback occurred during the song titled “We’re Going Down Like The Titanic (Women And Children First)”, not only because the title reminded me of Scatterbrain’s “Down With The Ship (Slight Return)”, but if you kept the multiple tempo changes, the mid-song breakdowns, the jazz/funk/lounge music interludes and the hip hop meets metal vibe and just replaced Scatterbrain’s thrashier moments with grindcore, you kinda have the Finish Him template. Kind of.
But these young lads from Coventry (and I do mean young, the oldest is 23 and the youngest only 18) are much more than that and have pretty much pulled off what many bands twice their age fail to do, and that’s fuse a wide range of musical influences; hardcore, funk, jazz, hip hop, metal and ambience, without sounding like pretentious wankers. There are times when I want them to lose the more melodic, lighter moments in favour of the heavier, grindcore they do more than ably, but that’s just a personal preference and definitely not a criticism, especially when you consider it’s one of the main factors contributing to the album’s variety and unpredictably.
This is a solid debut from a young band bursting with energy and sincerity, and like Scatterbrain’s ‘Here Comes Trouble’ this album is a fusion of many elements, but unlike Scatterbrain, Finish Him’s ‘An Audience With…’ isn’t crap.