Some bands love having very ironic names. When a band is called Daughters, listeners might expect: (1) a female-dominated or female-fronted lineup, and (2) an introspective folk-rock or adult alternative approach along the lines of the Indigo Girls, the October Project, or 10,000 Maniacs. But those who have been following Daughters since their official formation in 2001 (or before that when they were As the Sun Sets) know that they aren't a female act and that they don't sound anything like the Indigo Girls, the October Project, or 10,000 Maniacs. Daughters are guys, and they're guys who provide a jagged, dense, highly abrasive dose of noise rock on this self-titled 2010 release. Daughters have been described as everything from mathcore or math metal to alternative metal to grindcore (although this album doesn't sound like Cannibal Corpse or Carcass), but noise rock is the term that best captures Daughters in 2010 -- and make no mistake: this is an extremely noisy album. Daughters thrive on being as noisy as possible, and they love to be as frantic and as nervous as possible. A lot of that nervousness comes from a healthy appreciation of punk; they clearly appreciate punk's high-speed aggression as much as they appreciate metal's heaviness. Combine that frantic, nervous, punk-minded tension with a lot of metallic heaviness, and you have an album that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. But for all its corrosive heaviness, this 55-minute CD has a strong sense of groove; in their own crushing way, Daughters' grooves are infectious. This self-titled effort tends to be predictable -- there isn't a lot of variety here -- but despite its limitations, the disc is an exhilarating, worthwhile listen if one has a taste for brutal sensory assault.
© Alex Henderson /TiVo