CoC : Mainliner - Mainliner Sonic : Review

Mainliner - _Mainliner Sonic_
(Charnel Music, 1997)
by: Andrew Lewandowski (5 out of 10)

Here's another question for you: say you have one of the world's better (defined herein as most frenetic) drummers in your band (in this case, Yoshida Tatsuya of the Ruins), would you then jack up the distortion on your guitars, burying the percussion in the bottom of the mix? No? Alas, Mainliner did not heed your warnings. Even though we now have to work a bit harder to discern the drums and thus exploit this album's full potential as a headfuck, the effort is well worth it. Although once you move beyond Tatsuya's efforts, the potency of the rest of Mainliner tends to fluctuate. When Mainliner is at their best, a complete sensory overload will pummel the listener, as the intensity factor approaches the stratosphere once the driving guitar solos and mincing production mesh with the pulsating bass lines and free form percussion of the band's rhythm section. Yet the horrid production results in a homogeneous feel throughout the album's five tracks (which total only thirty minutes of music), and the structure of the album's two title tracks cause both to asphyxiate on a string composed of impotence raveled around the listener's correlating sense of ennui.

(article published 14/9/1997)