Album Review: Jivebomb – “Ethereal” (Hardcore)

Written by Ellis

Pretty sure Jivebomb haven’t always been this ugly (complimentary). Yep, a quick listen back to the Baltimore hardcore outfit’s fantastic 2021 demo and even better debut EP Primitive Desires that followed it reveals a band that played things mean enough but definitely sat closer to what you might call “traditional hardcore” in the vein of the likes of The Rival Mob or a pre-alt-rock-influenced Scowl perhaps. For their debut LP Ethereal however the band have turned into something nastier, pulling in a bit of grindcore and recruiting producer Ben Greenberg of industrial metallers Uniform to deliver a proper brute of a record that still holds to the five-piece’s get in and get out sensibilities by sticking to a tight 15-minute runtime. Thank goodness our fearless leader Kep recently abolished minimum word counts because this album’s here for a good time and not for a long one.

Proof of Jivebomb’s more abrasive and somewhat more ambitious direction for this LP is found swiftly enough in opener “The Impact”, which starts with a good 25 seconds of twisted noise and samples before the band kick into business as usual, or at least their new version of it. Immediately things feel dirtier and grimier than their previous efforts, with vocalist Kat Madeira going all gruff and grunty and guttural over thick and scuzzy bass and guitars and a snare that clangs like that video of the Irish weather lady getting absolutely annihilated by a stop sign.

The strongest chunk of the album is definitely around the middle, where a few tracks benefit from some relatively stark contrast between one another (note the emphasis on relatively there). The high-energy two-stepping of “Wise Choice” runs into the imposing mid-tempo sludgeoning of “Fate’s Domain”, which is in turn followed by the reckless D-beaty abandon and wild lead guitar work of “Rhythm Zero”, and then the super stompy “Charm” whose runtime of one minute 57 seconds makes it the longest track on the record. Granted this kind of fast-slow-fast approach is hardly the most out there choice for making an album like this compelling, but it’s effective stuff nonetheless.

To be clear as well, that’s not the only part of the record that’s worth your time, especially considering how little of it Ethereal actually asks for. There’s some interesting noisy stuff going on in tracks like “Estrela” and “Mistaken” for example—a few extra layers that make them feel just a touch more oppressive—while penultimate track and most recent single “Seraphim (Marina’s Song)” has a really cool dirgey start before it tears off into another D-beaty rager—again, contrast init. Greenberg’s mix binds it all together really well too, all gritty and murky in a way that suits the band’s push into some of their more extreme influences without totally muffling the urgency and intensity they had nailed in the first place.

THE BOTTOM LINE

For such a compact record, Ethereal is also impressively cohesive and immersive, in that even if it might take a few listens for individual tracks to start sticking with you, the overall vibe leaves an impression pretty much immediately. It might not be quite as “fun” as their previous efforts, but you could argue that the band have taken on more of their own style here, and you have to hand it to them for going this way when plenty of their peers have pursued something more accessible in recent years (which is also totally fine, for the record). Set aside an hour and let it tear through you four times in a row. Rad.