The record indeed starts brutally and I instantly like the raw produced sound of the down-tuned guitars. A booming Hatebreed riff comes at me and a mean pitbull terrier screaming his lungs out. Oh my god I thought, not again… But after some minutes I started to nod slightly with the music. Especially the second track called Learning To Count brought me to my second opinion, because the riffs tended to Arkangel riffs combined with Hatebreed. I don’t like the zillion Hatebreed rip-offs, but bands that give the same aggression as that band and sounding original is quite an extraordinary happening. Contra manages their own sound, although sometimes they tend to go back to riffs that I heard a dozen times before. I was also surprised by the ‘assumed’ stoner riff I heard coming by, it would not have misunderstood if that riff was written by Fu Manchu for example. Nice diversity. Heart for instance is one of those songs that are always cool for the brutality, but lacks originality.