Album Review: Yattai - "Fast Music Means Love"

A couple weeks ago I reviewed Yattai's discography spanning compilation 50 Love Hymns for Grindheads, and I absolutely loved it. Yattai has got a new LP coming out early spring of this year called Fast Music Means Love. Let's dive straight into this bitch.

I'm not going to introduce the band again, because you can just click that link in the last paragraph and read the little blurb I made about them before I reviewed their compilation.

It's funny that, considering this is the band's first full length album (to my knowledge, at least) I wasn't concerned that the quality of their material would have deteriorated or that they would have thrown a complete curve ball at me. After powering through the 50 song compilation which consisted of around 7 years worth of material, I knew Yattai were really comfortable and consistent with their sound. Fast Music keeps along with the blasting chaos that we've come to know and love from these Angoulême based grinders.

Musically, Fast Music is just that: fast music. There are blast beats galore, million-mile-an-hour guitar riffs, and songs as short as 11 seconds on this album. The musicianship is as awesome as it ever has been with these guys, and they've managed to up the amount of catchy riffs and memorable passages without sacrificing their ear-crushing brutality. Unlike most grind bands that throw in catchier bits into their music, Yattai can make both the slower (I use that term loosely) and the cripplingly fast parts as memorable as all hell.

The production on Fast Music is much better than that on any of the releases featured on 50 Love Hymns. Everything sounds much clearer and more defined, but still has a raw edge to it. This album still has a claustrophobic, live sound much like their older material, with everything sounding like Yattai are grinding away right in front of you. That live element is something I really loved about their older material, and I'm really glad they were able to preserve it for this LP.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: Fuck the Faxe, Fast and Furious 3 (Angoulême Thrashcore), Everything but Friendship

On a Playlist With: Wormrot, Assück, Faxe

Overall Score

4.5

Yattai have done it again. Top notch grindcore for any fan of the genre. Fast Music Means Love is a complete overload of grinding blasts, ear wrenching vocals, and nauseating guitar riffs. Call me what you'd like, but I think Fast Music Means Love is going to be one of 2013's best grind albums.

Fast Music Means Love is going to come out on Douchebags Records, Underground Pollution Records, and like, a zillion other different labels. It's going to be a 1-sided LP with graffiti on the non-grooved side. Yeah, it's going to be bomb as fuck. Yattai has a Bandcamp page with some of their splits as well as this full length, and you can check out their Facebook page here.

That's all for now, folks! Keep on grinding in the free world.

-DG