Reviews

The trip from Canada to Hell is a long one; one that inspires change and growth but leaves  underlying inanities basically intact.  It’s been three years since Canada Songs dropped  jaws everywhere within the sonic self-abuse community, but Rhode Island’s Daughters are finally back with a new full length - and this one actually lasts longer than ten minutes.  Hell Songs is not Canada Songs part deux - and really, who would be happy with just a repetition of that gleefully mind melting riffsplosion?  Hell Songs retains the trademark Daughters guitar looping and out-of-left-filed approach to lyrics but runs the songs on a forklift  through an entire warehouse of musical leftovers and out takes, picking up violins, broken effects pedals, vocoders, and the dirt off the floor. The result is a deeper, crazier band who remain one step ahead of avant garde with both feet planted firmly in sophomoric humor.
 
While grind aficionados cannot find fault with the nihilistic guitar screeching and frantic drum flailings, many might find cause to bicker with the change in vocals.  The singer remains the same lovable dirtbag who dispenses advice on fisting and fucking on their website in the Ask An Asshole section, but his vocals have gone from As The Sun Sets to retarded gas station attendant.  This is not necessarily a bad thing. Without being confined to such a narrow range (read: screaming) the vocals enter new, previously unexplored levels of unseemliness.  The music too, has room to stretch out.  While there are plenty of fret melting runs that give anything off Canada Songs a run for its money (check out Fiery and Hyperventalitionsystem) there are also a few songs over two minutes long including the eveything-but-the-kitchen-sink Cheers Pricks which opens with what sounds like a dog whistle being sucked into a bug zapper and closes with a long walk down what was assumed to be an empty hallway.
 
Hell Songs is perfect in that it’s not what we wanted but it is what we deserved.  All the songs are great, unless you don’t like them, in which case they are all terrible.  But that is the magic of Daughters and all spazzy grind noise machines.  It just hurts so good, and Daughters hurt the best of all.