Review by Rachel Jablonski
The illustrated characters on the album artwork need more than self-help you might say. The immediate intrigue of Spitfire’s latest disc, Self-Help, comes the moment you glance at the cover, the CD booklet, and the CD itself. Deformed human-like creatures stare back with blank eyes in a creepy fashion overtop a trippy, wavy, gray-lined background. A man and woman with twisty horns out of their skulls, an empty Jesus-like figure, two human bodies with bird heads caressing, and, most grotesque, a bald dude with a beard of tentacles, the only figure to have eyeballs. These images set the stage for the brutal hardcore endeavor to come with each listen.
Spitfire’s heavy mess of sound begins with a track called “Meat Market.” Unbending vocals of the same rough consistency, rarely varying in pitch and vocal pattern, saturate this track and most of the album. Standing apart from the rest however, “Meat Market” is comprised of varied and tolerable riffs, tempo changes, and an interesting arrangement all together. “Life and Limb” follows this trend and is also a decent track. But perhaps it is because these tracks come early in the album that they show originality before redundancy kicks in. In contrast, most tracks on the album, “Dear John” a prime example, are a mesh of noise that have a difficult time holding attention. The loud metal/hardcore mixture exposed by Spitfire overall just does not produce an effective listen from start to finish.
Originally formed in the late ‘90s, Spitfire called it quits in 2001 after the release of their EP called The Sideshow Whiplash. Reforming, the band interestingly enough now has three guitarists. Unfortunately, the utilization of the overabundance of diverse musicians does not live up to expectation.