Mzztr |Pronounced MIS-TER |Independent

comedy are thrown into the same grinder. The presentation is loud on purpose, with blood, spit, warped sexuality, online-age mockery, and apocalypse anxiety all pushed into the front row. This is not a band aiming for elegant songwriting or tasteful restraint. Mzztr works through excess, dirt, and bad manners, which can be entertaining when the riffs and vocal attack back it up, and tiring when the joke starts eating the song.

"Pronounced Mis-Ter" has a raw, jagged production that gives the EP a damaged video-tape quality. The guitars scrape and stomp, the vocals jump between threat, mockery, and cartoonish sickness, and the rhythm section gives the material enough movement to stop it from becoming pure costume work. "Silence Won’t Protect You" is the most focused cut here, with its nü metal pulse, repressed tension, and Hi8 music video language pulling from early 2000s MTV rot and found footage horror. "Kimberly" goes after influencer culture with a sleazy grin, while "I Cüm Blürd" turns Cannibal Corpse worship into gross parody. The problem is that Mzztr sometimes confuses provocation with impact. Some ideas hit, some just wave their arms for attention.

As a release, "Pronounced Mis-Ter" is decent, uneven, and rough around the edges in ways that are sometimes useful and sometimes just noisy. The EP has personality, no doubt, and the cassette format, ugly humor, and camcorder aesthetic all belong to the same infected package. There are hooks, there is filth, there is attitude, and there is also material that needed trimming. Mzztr has arrived with a debut that is noticeable, messy, and occasionally sharp, though not as transgressive or crushing as it seems to think.

|7.0