Cassette Review // Intel "afterdust" (Tetryon Tapes)

 https://tetryontapes.bandcamp.com/album/afterdust

Intel comes out swinging with this sound somewhere between hardcore and punk.  I am reminded of bands like New Bomb Turks and Fight Paris because of the complexities in this sound.  Sometimes you'll hear those starts and stops of chunky chords, but you'll also get some right on guitar notes blistering on through to the surface.  There is a very fine technical aspect to all of this that I enjoy and that doesn't always come out when music is this loud.  

"Virtue Signal Fire" seems to among the heaviest on this cassette while "Choke on the Void" reminds me of an artist who would have played at CBGB's.   Refused come out a bit in here as well.  The fifth and final song, "MK Ultra-Marathon" is the longest of them all, but also carries this slower guitar riff at the end which can remind me of something you might hear in a skateboarding video back in the day.

It's easy enough to think about this cassette as being a certain type of sound from a certain era- those early Punk-O-Rama's or when The Hope Conspiracy first came onto the scene on Equal Vision Records- but I also feel like Intel just has this way about it that the sound makes you think that if you hear them live, they are there to fuck shit up.  If I saw Intel live I would definitely expect them to knock over their entire drum set before the end and that's a compliment.