Lifetime - Tinnitus

I'm glad there are so many bands that sound like Lifetime/Kid Dynamite. I guess I should lambaste Shook Ones and New Mexican Disaster Squad for their lack of originality, but dammit, sometimes it feels like neither Lifetime nor Kid Dynamite recorded enough to satisfy.

I don't know why I wrote that. I'm not going to talk about either clone band. That intro basically segued into irrelevance.

Anyway, Lifetime. This album here (there, to the left) is the band's last 7" record before 1995's classic Hello Bastards, and acts as kind of a stylistic intermediary between the aforementioned record's melodic hardcore niche and the emocore sound of Background. Basically, a combination of the best aspects of both phases of the band - the high energy and enthusiastic vocals of later albums mixed with the hardcore (the moshy kind) aspects and slow, heartfelt, segments of the early stuff. This guy is only about 11 minutes long, but in my opinion, it's the absolute best thing the band ever recorded. The semi-monotone vocals of Background and Dwell are gone, and the speedy hardcore punk mold has yet to set on the songwriting."Ferret" can stay stuck in my head for as long as my immortal, cosmos-swirling being continues to rock the free world. Seriously, though, all four songs are brilliant. Angry, hopeful, beautiful, angsty, and fun stuff here.

This EP is of course, totally out of print, but you can find it on similarly totally out of print compilation, Seveninches - a roundabout way of saying 'here's Tinnitus' and 'no I don't have a link to where you can purchase it':

http://www.mediafire.com/?qovnuwzyygg