Psychic Ills' debut, Dins, toed several different lines-- between structured compositions and drifting ambience, between growling psychedelia and hazy shoegaze, and between melody and drone. While that may sound nuanced to the uninitiated, the details were often swallowed by scads of swirling, processed guitar that the band's influences necessitated, somewhere between the overly-cited-yet-with-good-reason My Bloody Valentine and Hawkwind. But whether by necessity, as these tracks were collected from vinyl-only EPs, or just the hesitant steps of an unproven band, the structure of the songs on Early Violence are far more predictable than the abrupt switches between the extremes of their debut. Whether you found those changes artful or indulgent, Early Violence at least offers us a different approach.
"Vice" showcases the same attention to detail as the best moments of Dins, with a far-off Farfisa offering a countermelody to the song's trembling, murky groove. Follower "Killer" uses more electronic tones than anything on the band's debut, and while the guitars are mine the same shoegazer sound, the drum machine spits and seethes under a repetitive, mechanical bass line and a burping 8-bit keyboard.
Things grow tired quickly, however, as"Diamond City" is a meandering blues vamp without a trace of originality, and "Days" covers similarly well-tread ground despite an otherwise promising minor-key drone. (Hidden track "Diamond City Redux" is somewhat rougher in recording quality, has some vocals, and isn't any more essential.) "Highway of Death" makes very creative use of the volume knob. "4AM" returns to a more mechanical, almost industrial throb, and it occurs to me that these tracks hit me harder because I'm starved for texture-- something I'd never say of Dins. "Red-Split" is a step in the right direction, led by a stately yet siren-like keyboard drone that sounds vintage and alien all at once. The fact the guitars lay back, adding a few bent notes for atmosphere, gives it the subtle uneasiness of a John Carpenter score and is memorable just for its contrast with the rest of the compilation. These scant eight tracks do nothing to change the enormous promise Psychic Ills showed on their debut; Early Violence just shows a lot less of it.
