Album Review: Hausu - Total

With a moniker referencing a batshit crazy Japanese horror film, Portland-based Hausu have crafted an album in Total that smashes through punk rock's brick walls by emphasising precision, post-punk wailings and moans (courtesy the vocal gymnastics of Robert Smith-mirroring Ben Funkhouser), steely ingenuity and discordance. Opener Chrysanthemum plays a post-hardcore numbness before spewing forth in molten distortion, while the quiet unease of Tetsuo and the singalong rhythms of Gardenia offer tangential possibilities. The marriage of technicality with innate melody and resolute exactitude impresses after closer, Bleak, feeds back into nothing.