by Emmanuel Castillo (@thebruiseonwe)
On each of their EP’s, Brazil’s Lasso have operated with the kind of focus that shows a mastery over the genre, but more than that, a fondness for the tools they’ve chosen to express their discontent. Ordem Imaginada tightens up the d-beat indebted hardcore that they’ve been refining over their last couple of releases, avoiding all flash and condensing the songs to only what’s needed to support the vocals. The brevity of the material means that there’s no space for error, and the band is accordingly tight — Lasso take the variation on a theme approach, bludgeoning the listener with the main riff of the song and then traveling down each rhythmic variation they can without stopping their momentum.
The EP’s brief runtime skirts the line between a creative rush of ideas and a disciplined approach to structure; The band operates efficiently thanks primarily to Rodrigo Gagliano’s drum work, which leaves little room for fucking around. In the rare moments when they slightly slow down the tempo, it becomes some of the most ear catching material on the EP due in part to Marcelo Adam taking the opportunity to use different textures, often more metallic, sinister, and piercing than the riffing that dominates most of the songs. With the steady beat locking the structure in place, the guitar and bass are free to color within those lines while Marcelo screams paranoid, observational lyrics with a fatalistic bent.
The EP’s recording has a sound that could’ve had Lasso fit in as the third band on the Gel/Cold Brats split, coming through most clearly in the slightly distorted vocals and noisy production that end up emphasizing the more subtle melodic elements. The opener “Respice Finem,” (“Consider the end”) begins with a squall of feedback and pick scraping before launching into a vignette of someone wrestling with the anxiety that comes with looking to the future, seeing the worst, and finding that their only agency may be in turning away from the future (“And nothing stops me from seeing a huge cycle of nothing learned, surrounded by vices and vague promises”). Early highlight “Animal Insignificante” sees the band propel themselves towards the tersely catchy chorus, Marcelo’s voice alternating between triplets in a clipped tone that recalls Jello Biafra and a carefully held scream that helps convey his disgust at the shell he sees in the mirror (“Insignificant animal/Dumb in words/I stumble at touch/I drink in derision/Breath of blood”).
It’s a feat to be able to convey the emotional core of a song without having to rely on the specific meaning of the word, something that is partially helped by the abrasive sound of the vocal recording. But the lyrics give a more definite shape to the fury, particularly in the more gruesome second half of the record where the imagery straddles the line between experience and fantasy. “Reverterio” (“Reversal”) juxtaposes images of futility (“Drowning in bravado/Drowning in silence/I reach for a blue hand”) against some of the most urgent guitar playing on the record. At the same time, the rhythm section is as unrelenting as ever while Marcelo’s voice finds new rhythms and cadences on the single word chorus in a way that manages to draw out an anthemic quality to the disaffection whether you know what he’s singing about or not.
While not reinventing hardcore, there’s value in incremental improvements and consistent songwriting, and variations in their songwriting reveal themselves upon relistens, which are easy to rack up when the whole project clocks in under ten minutes. What sticks out most about Lasso three EPs in is a commitment to a certain kind of show; there’s no trace of metal on this, no mosh parts in the modern sense, and the noisy recording emphasizes minimalist arrangements and the feel of live playing rather than playing to the idea that you might be listening to this in a more sterile environment. It’s a sound rooted in negation to match lyrics about rejecting skewed, grotesque reality. There’s something to be said about developing a sound through repetition and road testing, and Lasso has added another document of their impressive chops to their catalog, improving their approach just by being better than they were the last time.