Reactionary Reviews | Black Math | Blood Sweat Sparkles
by Roger Young
Black Math gloriously revel in not reinventing the wheel. Screamo, punk, rock n roll grunge, youth, whatever, attacked with gusto. Don't let the word Math fool you into thinking this is prog-rock. It's fucking progressive though. Blood, Sweat, Sparkles plunges onwards with relentless disregard.
I do not use the word “gusto” lightly. On Walls, Walls, Walls, the guitars chug and chaos, head bang hair gets in your eyes as you ride the smoke machine roar, a wilful naive rage, and is that a fucking trombone? Then they gwar. Are we at The Winston?
Bricks, “Come say it in my space, of which you surely waste.” or something like that, I reach for adjectives like tumultuous, they fail me. The guitars do not. Lofstrand is now merely showing off.
Rein Back does not rein back. Melodic sing along, bass chugs, psychedelic whirls. Physically instructive.
“Your thoughts and kindness don't mean shit”, sonic-youths Cam Lofstrand, on Numb and Loving it, wailing, “How dare you ask me how I am?”. Black Math are totally punk rock, without resorting to punk rock. The guitar, the bass, the drums. I once described drummer Acacia Van Wyk as “a raptor trying to outrace an asteroid”, on BSS I would update that to “meteor”. Tyla Burnett on bass will hate me for just giving him this honourable mention.
Sparks imagines an anthemic stadium crowd packed into an art school nightclub. Someone tries to crowdsurf and breaks their wrist. Also a bit angry. Nice and angry. “I just want you to shut the fuck up” over Slashesque guitar riffs, how is this drumkit holding up? I don't want them to shut the fuck up. I get feedback. Tyla is actually fucking good, btw.
Familiar Faces, No Names is the quiet one. “All my gold has turned to shit, try to sweep up all my bits”.. Oh the jangly guitar, oh the enya-lite background, I want to quote every sweetly intoned word. “I hate myself when it suits me, I want you on your fucking knees.”
Animals Gagging For Law. Do I have to describe every track? There are three people in this band, how do they reproduce this live? “And if you listen to the hearts intention and core….” . In the last third there's that trumpet or trombone sound again, lighters aloft. I'm over simplifying.
Gone is primed for airguitar, with a rhythm that will spiral any mosh into the stillness of shouting along. It's cohesive. All of Blood, Sweat, Sparkles makes me want to get out the house and cause some shit, do some shit, fall in love, fall off a chair.
Disregarding contemporary conventions, Black Math could have recorded this twenty years ago, five years ago, yesterday, some point in the future and it feels like now. Blood, Sweat, Sparkles is driving fast, slightly high, oblivious, resplendent.