The Jonbenét Ramsey murder case has weaved its way in and out of our news chomping lives since the latter part of 1998. This was the time when the world was flummoxed and enraptured by the eight-year-old beauty queen's slaying. Lately the case has returned from the abyss again to haunt us with dolled up pictures of a little girl's face that has been deceased for nine years. The Jonbenét, the band from Houston, not the family from Colorado, take their name from the media shitstorm that has relentlessly ensued over the years, borrowing their namesake from the deceased to emblazon their merch and records.
Ugly/Heartless is the brand new full-length on Pluto Records from this Houston, Texas quartet whose only prior proper release is a short five-song EP entitled The Plot Thickens, which served as a decent introduction to the then-new band. The Jonbenét are a four-piece screamy whatever-label-you-want-to-put-on-them rock band with a gripping affinity for southern rock and an aversion to the worst parts of mall-metal. If you're looking for machinegun fire blast-beats, technical guitar work, one-minute songs, and constant guttural screams go listen to the new Phoenix Bodies record instead. The Jonbenét are categorically slippery, yet retain the ferocity of hardcore, the transitions of metal, and the attitude of punk rock, all served with a piping hot helping of southern rock, direct from where else but the Lonestar state.
Ugly/Heartless is an interesting take on the world with twelve songs spread out to about a total of a forty-five minute runtime that blend the thin lines of southern rock and the intentions of screamo, and of course the enchanting spirit of rocking the fuck out. And they do the latter extremely well. The Jonbenét's guitar playing has whispers of The Blood Brothers' earliest records: jangly and driving, off kilter and angular. And that same driving force is felt from the get-go on Ugly/Heartless, when "Devils" comes ripping through your speakers with sequenced feedback sandwiched between alternating screams in high and low registers. The madness continues into the next song, "Eating Lightning Pt. 2," with its fluid bass line and fun guitar work. This track is easily the album's clearest and most accomplished moment as well as its most propulsive track. The end of the song is creepy with sparse guitar and doom drumming; it is definitely the most evocative cut on the record save for the last song, the album's eight-minute opus "Hearts in a Jar" which tugs on emotional/experimental strings more than any other contained on the record.
The Jonbenét wear their influences quite visibly on their collective sleeve, and they are not doing anything particularly new, but they do it with such a youthful exuberance that it is hard not to be taken away by the album's energy. Ugly/Heartless has the ability to appeal to anyone with a desire to hear screamy music, not necessarily metal heads or hardcore kids, but everyone in between. There is something more to these crazy Texan kids and if you listen closely there is a lot of value in these songs, even though you may have to decipher it via ripped-throat screams.
