Like some of their previous efforts, Buck at the Moon does have a hint of that diy death metal flair to it. After the brief The Lost Boys audio sample, the listener is greeted with a furious mixture of mathcore technical mayhem and grinding death metal brutality on the opening track “Shaving in the Slop Sink”. Consider Impaled with Dillinger Escape Plan execution, though the random breakdown about forty seconds in kind of kills the flow. The gory humor here does carry over to “Phone Bros”, utilizing a standard Sludge crossed with hardcore approach to make light of the social media and ever connected status of society today. It’s a catchy track, but it actually pales in comparison to their cover of “Pet Sematary” that plays by Graveyard Classics rules, just with a better guttural presence that suits the cleaner sounding instruments and eighties horror punk hooks.
Sadly, that cover is where the EP stands out the most. Yes the two original tracks are good, but neither really hits the listener with anything lasting beyond the well executed precision. While it boasts a good amount of variety, sarcasm, and violence, it just feels like something put together for the sake of having something new to fill the gap between albums. Thankfully it’s available as a digital download you can pick up for free (or one US dollar if you want it to show in your digital collection on that site), as it only really floats around the pool as a standard example that fans will enjoy, but won’t really wrangle any new ones into the fold.