Splits are traditionally a way two bands can get their music recorded/released by combining money. If you read that wrong you might even think bands combine monkeys. Sabertooth Zombie and Jumpstreet each contribute four songs towards proof that the bay area is a force not to be reckoned with.
Sabertooth Zombie blasts balls with the first four songs. Sabbertooth Zombie is able to build upon their demo and make it so they come off more than just a "decent local band." Sabbertooth Zombie plays a metallic style of hardcore. Unlike bands from Ringworm to As I Lay Dying, Sabbertooth Zombie doesn't play a crushing style but a more fun style. It'd be like if your friends and you were hanging out, suddenly guitars dropped from the heavens and everybody started throwing up m/ signs. Then everyone was like, "Ohhh!" and did back flips off of cliffs. Seriously check the intro to "Wolfpack" and you'll find yourself either fingering your own asshole or someone else's out of the sheer joy Eric Enos and Jay McNeilly create with galloping guitars and harmonics. Cody Sullivan's gnarled panther bursts of anger remind me of no other singer but Sullivan himself. This really aids in giving Sabbertooth Zombie their own sound. When Sullivan screams, "Go kick rocks dummy!" I want to pile drive the closest living entity as Enos's solo enters my room. Hopefully one day my sister will understand why I did this to her. Sullivan also pens some more interesting lyrics such as, "I feel like a shipwreck/Death at my back/Sleep in my shoes and you'll miss the attack," in the song "Shoes." They're poetic but not so much that they're intangible.
The Jumpstreet side of the split lunges straight for the throat. It's fast punk/hardcore that doesn't do anything fancy but instead just fucking rocks the shit out of balls. The dual vocals work really well as Tom Kingsbury's deeper voice contains the rage I hear in Negative Approach and Justin Davis's voice contains the anger of every teenager to ever have a skateboard taken from them by cops. The addition of Davis's menacing laugh in "The Wrong Kids" and Kingsbury's grunt in "Cold Shoulder" might seem obscure but make this much more fun. Jake Casarotti's fast beats are so in your face that you'll breakout in acne. Just like the Sabbertooth Zombie side, Jumpstreet improves upon their demo with this split. They've gotten much tighter and focused. Although there's no "Captain Cool" super sing-along, "The Wrong Kids" makes up for it with their fun rhyming lyrics. "We'll see how tough your talk is when my fist hits your face/We'll see how hard your walk is when you're in a knee brace/There's so many people dying in this world/Why cant one of them be you?" make even the most peaceful person go pro-beat down. They might be young, but they've already written four of the best hardcore songs I've heard in four minutes.
Without a doubt both sides of this split are rad. The packaging is pretty original; a CD with a red bottom inside of a DVD case. The drawings done by Alex Capasso remind me of Scary Stories with that kind of wretched-fucked-up feel. The main problem with this split is that each side is about five minutes long and doesn't give the listener enough time to warm up to each band. If each band can improve how they did from the demo to this release, their next releases will be super serious kick ass material. Regardless, these eight songs are bomb.
