Plebeian Grandstand – How Hate Is Hard to Define

March 2010 • Basement Apes Industries

This album is another entry in the long list of furious, chaotic, pounding mathcore albums that follows in the steps of bands like Converge and Botch, and while it follows the formula pretty closely and doesn't bring anything terribly new to the table it's still a pretty solid album in its own right. I'm nothing of an aficionado of this style, admittedly, but How Hate Is Hard to Define stands up alright.

Like the aforementioned Converge, Plebeian Grandstand's sound employs a nice blend of fast technical riffing and somewhat milder, yet still brutal, breakdowns. The band's performance is pretty tight throughout, making the constant changes in tempo and time signature seem simple; there are also some more consistent songs like the sludgy "Easy to Hate / Hard to Define", showing that the band does have a bit more diversity in them than it would first seem.

Like a lot of music in this style, though, the songs can be difficult to follow at times and so the album can be a fatiguing listen. There are only a few places that the audial face-stomping finally lets up (the interlude "Pie in the Sky" is a welcome respite) and to me a lot of it still sounds kind of messy. I don't mean this in a technical sense (as I've mentioned, the musicians are quite proficient); rather, the music itself is just all over the place and it's hard to find footing in what I'm listening to during the more chaotic parts. But there are a few places where the riffs really click—the start of "Are You Angry?" has a really nice groovy rhythm to it of which I would have liked to hear more.

So while the album isn't really my style, I can appreciate it alongside the rest of my tiny mathcore library. While it's not something I'll be revisiting very often, truer fans will probably enjoy it, and that's at least a mild success.

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