Not In Portland – Inherit Yourself EP

I love venomous hardcore as much as the next man, but there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. Not In Portland’s debut EP Inherit Yourself is sadly an example of the latter.

Things begin very promisingly with biting riffs that for a nice change aren’t enormously down-tuned, coupled with barked vocals and thrashing drums. Everything is fine until the chorus arrives, at which point I’m really not sure what happens. It sounds sort of chorus-like, but vocally it’s all over the place and wholly unmemorable. The rest of the song then suffers from having very little continuity, whilst at the same time having very few memorable moments. The subsequent songs are unfortunately much of the same. ‘Armchair Cynics’ isn’t so bad as the various parts that make it up are more striking, but the song doesn’t flow at all and once again the sung vocals are questionable. Each song seems to wash into the next, and with little variation in the screamed vocals, as well as discordant guitar work that all sounds very alike, it’s easy to see why this happens.

The sections that make up these songs are on whole pretty decent. The trouble is that there are far too many parts, and whilst all being different, they all sound very similar. With the drums constantly changing between half time, normal-time and double-time, the songs don’t flow well at all, and the vocals that should knit the songs together just aren’t strong enough to do the job. It’s not a crime to have simple parts in songs and this EP is a perfect example of what happens when you don’t.