Album Review: Cinemechanica - The Martial Arts

Cinemechanica - The Martial Arts
(2006, Hello Sir Records)

Much like Nashville, our friends to the south in Athens, Ga have been busy adding a new chapter to their town's already rich musical history. In the last year bands like Ham1 and Untied States have chipped away at the musical preconceptions most listeners have about Athens. A major player in the current musical scenery is Hello Sir Records, the owners of which perform in one of the labels finest bands, Cinemechanica.
I was wondering when the first of the summertime-road trip albums would get here. The ones you pop in on a long distance drive with friends exclaiming, "Holy Shit! You HAVE hear this!" Then Cinemechanica's debut, The Martial Arts, came along and I stopped wondering.
Embodying a veritable avalanche of energetic riffs and intense rhythms, Cinemechanica are usually filed into genres with the prefix "post". Dueling guitars intertwine, race along together and then unexpectedly diverge summoning order from chaos and then nimbly diving back into chaos. The guitars may be the stars of the show here but the rhythm section is there to underline and punctuate every step of the way. The drums produce a controlled frenzy of snare and cymbal that never drowns out the prominently powerful bass. As for the vocals, they are of the screamin', yellin', make my throat hurt if I try to sing along variety.
The running time may seem brief clocking in at just over 31 minutes, but there is so much energy exuberated in that time that you may need a nap afterward. Every second of The Martial Arts demands your attention. Every riff and abrupt change wants to be the one you remember. These are songs for folks who like their riffs to come fast and furious and seldom pause for a breath.
Cinemechanica's frantic gutar work and masterful execution of complex time changes often invites comparisons to bands like Drive Like Jehu, Q and Not U, Faraquet and Don Caballero. I'll leave the genre classification to you people, just know that Cinemechanica is loud, fast, complex and will kick your indie/emo ass. Also they have given us THE guitar album of summer 2006. So far at least.