By James Ballinger
Portland’s Rabbits doesn’t sound at all like cute, little, fluffy bunnies. Rabbits is more like a laboratory test bunny that’s been crossbred with a panther, pumped up with steroids, and ready to bust out of its cage and lay waste to its captors and wrongdoers. After releasing their sophomore album, 2011’s Lower Forms on Relapse Records, the band has made the jump to local Seattle label Good to Die Records. Ensuring the band gets to put out the record they want to, Bites Rites is a brute force of a record. From the opening track “We and Zoo” the band tears through seven tracks never letting you have more than a second to catch your breath. Up until the atmospheric “On Mars II”, it’s a non-stop face pummeling, that growls and barks with a rabid intensity; even without a bass player. Don’t let that hold you back, vocalist/guitarist Booze and second guitarist Sethro make sure you’ve got plenty of low end you won’t even notice. Even the deranged covers of Spaceman 3’s “2:35” and the Hüsker Dü classic “What’s Going On” sound excitingly fresh and closes out the record with purpose amongst a album of pure chaos. Bites Rites is available now as a 180-gram Vinyl, or digital download via Good to Die Records. Own this.
http://goodtodierecords.bandcamp.com/album/bites-rites
http://www.goodtodierecords.com/band/rabbits/
