Aybat Hallar

God Hates Aybat Hallar

Written by: PP on 11/12/2010 06:31:25

Aybat Hallar is a rare instance where the Russians and Americans show what can be achieved if they are able to work together for once. Despite battling problems like lethargy, apathy, vodka, and finally the death of their bassist, the multi-national punk rock outfit finally managed to release their debut full length about drugs, alcohol, sex, love and politics, written over the course of 14 years on two different continents. They play a snotty, melodic brand of punk rock that has all the tell-tale signs of NOFX inspiration written all over, so they kinda sound like Japan's Nicotine or Hit The Switch in places, except there's one major difference that sets these guys apart. They incorporate large amounts of rock'n'roll and punkabilly to their sound, reflected in rowdy solos and ass-kicking attitude that strikes out from their sound every now and then.

There are twenty-five songs on "God Hates Aybat Hallar", all averaging around the three-minute mark, which is a mammoth size for a band just putting out their first full length. The reasoning behind such an absurd amount of songs is the aforementioned death of their bassist, so these songs are bound to be exceptionally emotional for the band, and I totally understand why they wanted to release every track he played on out of respect to his memory. Hearing these tracks on a studio album must be an overwhelming experience for any of the guys in the band, but for the rest of us, much less so. I don't know how to put this without offending his memory, but somewhere in the process Aybat Hallar forgot, or rather, deliberately ignored quality control and just inserted everything they had come up with onto the album in a decision that was almost certainly emotion-based. That's ultimately the pitfall of the record, as there are about ten awesome songs worth of punk rock here that would've made a great, perhaps not fantastic but a great snotty punk record. These are unfortunately lost within the overwhelming mass of songs that essentially aren't that different from one another. Recording 25 songs on an album is OK for grindcore bands as they average less than a minute per track, but here, the disc just drags on and on and on and on...until you're ready to switch to something else less than halfway through.

It's a shame, because a song like "A.D.D" has a catchy sing along, "Cigarette Butts Are Litter Too" has a nice melody-line, and "In Denial" is a classic early 90s NOFX track when they were slightly more aggressive and more hardcore-based in their delivery. As it stands now, however, the listener is forced to do intense research to find the good tracks on the album, having to prowl through a bunch of average-to-decent tracks in the process, and I'm afraid that's not a challenge most A.D.D kids of today will be up for.

6

Download: Cigarette Butts Are Litter Too,
For the fans of: NOFX, Nicotine, Hit The Switch, The Down And Outs
Listen: Myspace

Release date 20.03.2010
Old Skool Kids

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