Ex Models

After being halved into a duo Ex Model Shahin and Ex Model-Zach have picked up their pieces and released their third album. With a sound dubbed "Fundustrial,” they have adapted their guitars to do double duty as noise generators, emitting a metal blackboard screech fans of Wolf Eyes and Hair Police have come to expect. Like the aforementioned and other post-post-post-hardcore bands, Ex Models’ exigent emotions more closely resemble fear and delirium than anger. While the duo often tour with a monster in a box providing the beat, on the album (and in its very title) they are abetted by Oneida champion percussionist Kid Millions. KM gives their broken machinery squall the backbeat of a rhythmic six-man dish pit crew. The method in the chaos is distilled in the single riff, drilling into unyielding substrata, or a simple progression triple-timed, repeated and dosed with welding sparks. Songs like "That’s Funny, I Don’t Feel Like a Shithead” resemble hornet-stung dirt bikes manically revving to escape a woolly mammoth graveyard. The bike is stuck but will… not… give… up!!! If, for example U2 are "running to stand still,” Ex Models are slam dancing on sheet metal to stand still.