Crystal Antlers: EP

Genre ladies and gentlemen, has become a complete joke.

Nu-Rave, Grindie, Dancecore, Noise-Funk, each sounding more ridiculous than the last and each dying out quicker than the next.

Bands have even started to embrace these typecasting labels and promote themselves from that direction, cashing in on the new popularity of spanning ten genres that nobodies heard of.

An exception from the pile then, comes in the form of Crystal Antlers.

Six songs and barely 25 minutes in length, this is some of the best Art-Punk, Low-Fi, Garage, Dance-Prog, Funk you'll hear this year.

From intro track to the last few seconds, its obvious this band aren't conforming to the typical non-conformities of the latest onslaught of ever so non-conformist bands.

Every song is solid and holds it's own place throughout this brief CD, never sounding cliché and never sitting comfortably enough to become boring.

This is a six year old with an entire warehouse of blue skittles to chew through.

Production is helmed by Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens and you can hear his fingerprints all over the EP. From the percussion of "Until The Sun Dies (Part 2)" to the rhythm of "Vexation", theres Volta at work here. Final song "Parting Song For The Torn Sky" is not only a highlight of the EP but also one of the best songs of 2008. It's 7 minutes of fuzz fuelled, low-fi, squealing brilliance that shows what this bands LP could sound like. It's a such a shame this is only a taster.

Loud, proggy, full of reverb and with rasping vocals hell bent on driving away anyone and everyone, it seems fit then to say that these guys might well just be the next big thing?