two songs’ dual tape reels spin like the used 7” you plucked from the record store’s dollar bin out of blind curiosity, sheathed in a folded sheet of purple construction paper inked with screenprints of angst-addled notebook doodles. Basement-recorded and pressed to paint-smeared cassettes, the debut solo effort of Austrian skramz triplicate unable to fully embrace this happiness is a historical re-enactment of late-90s/early-00s emotive hardcore practices and sensibilities. It’s the sort of single that’s stashed in the attic of a thousand adults in their mid-30s who were once inexorably moody and into self-publishing zines crammed with handwritten poetry — the couplet of cuts that make up this tape are timelessly oily, pheromonal bursts of adolescent frustration paved with a blacktop of fuzz pedal crust. Though released in 2016, I wouldn’t be shocked to find two songs interred deep in the annals of an obscure Blogspot-based filesharing site among Saetia bootlegs and Funeral Diner B-sides.
unable to fully embrace this happiness may revel in turn-of-the-century subculture kitsch, but their jagged riffs and sandpaper textures feel like a welcome breath of mothball-scented, powerviolence-influenced air among slicker, more shoegazey peers scattered throughout Bandcamp’s emo/screamo/skramz tags. Total America Online dial-up, Nokia 3310, mail-order hardcore split vibes streamable on the information superhighway.
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