Daughters - Canada Songs

Daughters - Canada Songs (2003)

Genre: Grindcore, Mathcore

Daughters have come a long way in developing their sound and straying from their hyper-aggressive style that can be found on this debut. And oh boy, is it really aggressive. As a reminder, I do not intend for this to be a really in-depth and complex review. I'm just sharing my quick personal thoughts on the album. As for any album review I do, I try to be objective without letting any personal bias get too much in the way of the final grade. 

Up to this point, I have never come across something as short as this that still qualifies as an album. This is a measly 11 minutes in length, but man, does it pack a punch within that timeframe. None of the ten songs on here go past the 2-minute mark, and nearly half of them don't even go past the 1-minute mark. Within the context of the musical style presented here, I can fully understand why that is the case, though. This record isn't so much about melody, because honestly, you'd be hard-pressed to find any on here, but more about disgustingly fast riffs and tempos.

I was initially put-off by the lack of a general structure, as the amount of distortion, fast instrumentation and wailing vocals don't exactly add up to create much variation on a surface level. I find it incredibly easy to go through this album and end up feeling like you just heard one long continuous song that was simply chopped up at parts. Upon further listening though, I found it a bit easier to focus on the distinct riffs hidden underneath the chaos. I still couldn't find a strong enough difference between tracks to immediately pick out any favorites or least favorites, though.

Really, this is one of those albums I can't really recommend for anyone who isn't already a fan of grind or hardcore and abrasive sounds. More so, I wouldn't consider this a bad album by any means, but it takes a certain level of appreciation for the genre and an open-mind to more extreme forms of musical expression to really get much enjoyment out of it. I admit, as you'll see by my score, that it wasn't exactly my cup of tea. However, for what it is, 11-minutes of runtime certainly prevents it from overstaying its welcome, and I certainly enjoyed this album to an extent from a technical standpoint. As a quick side note, the titles of some of these songs really made some of these songs that much more quirky, that I couldn't help but chuckle, even if the lyrics themselves were at times masochist or sexist.

C+

Favorite Tracks: Nurse, Would You Please Prep the Patient for Sexual Doctor, The Ghost with the Most

Least Favorite Track: Hard to say, really.