Hot Hot Heat – Scenes One Through Thirteen
(Ohev)

These B.C. boys have been garnering many favourable reviews with their new 5 song E.P. on Sub Pop Records, but this cd collects recordings from an earlier incarnation of the band that sounds almost entirely different.

The major difference you will notice among these 13 songs is that there is no guitar to be found anywhere. On these songs, Hot Hot Heat consists of a keyboard player, bassist, singer and drummer (ex. d.b.s. drummer Paul Hawley, incidentally), and the effect is basically what you might expect from a screamo band using keyboards in place of guitars. They take cues from aggressive, keyboard-driven bands like The Locust and The VSS, molding them into their own style. There is certainly no trace of the mod/rock n roll feel that their newer material has; the music is simply raw, edgy and evil-sounding.

As you can tell by the album title, there are 13 tracks on here, but they are taken from 2 separate recording sessions. The second session, which makes up the last 5 songs on the album, is somewhat lacking in sound quality. Fortunately, most of the standout tracks come from the first session anyways, particularly the sinister synthesizer sounds of “The Case That They Gave Me” and “Keep My Name Out Of Your Mouth”.

The band has clearly matured a fair amount since these songs were written, and their new E.P. is a much more solid outing. However, there’s still something to be said for the youthful energy and unique noise captured on this disc. I do think though, that if there was a little more melody in these songs they would much more listenable as a whole. — Sean

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