Before forming into more of spacey, sludgy, mostly instrumental outfit playing sprawling songs somewhere between Cave In and Neurosis, Omaha's Back When

began as a ferocious and arty metalcore band, and their debut was this seven song EP that came out in 2003. We picked up some of these for C-Blast when we

recently raided Imagine It's back catalog for more The Autumn Project stuff, and I was surprised at how cool and varied this release is. The CD's package has

an interesting mix of eerie figure illustrations and dark, ominous background images that look like they came out of a nightmarish children's book; the disc

itself reveals lots of crushing, mathy riffage, spastic rhythms, monstrous deathgrowls trading off with manic shrieking, and dissonant guitars that all point

to modern ADD inflicted metalcore, as do the song titles like 'I Could See Terminator 2 Really Happening' and 'Mandatory Exodus To Hell'. But there's also

alot of deftly handled stylistic shifts that make this more interesting than much of the spazzy metalcore that was coming out around the same time. On songs

like 'Stabhead - The Prey Of A Fantasy', Back When create a bleak, dark atmosphere with slow, dissonant doom riffage and huge epic hooks and spacey FX and

psychedelic guitar noise that gives way to calm, malevolent instrumental passages and crushing, His Hero Is Gone-esque crust. The wonky spiraling fretboard

freakouts and herky-jerky offtime beats on "I Could See 'Terminator 2' Really Happening" signal a mashup of sludgy chaotic metalcore, grinding death metal,

and no wave-y hardcore. Opener 'Aphorism on the Existence of Fire' is one of the discs catchiest tunes, a crushing melodic riff and spazzy drumming suddenly

parted by a weird, quiet jazzy instrumental part. The whole disc is filled with these clean jazzy interludes which keeps things interesting. All in all, a

surprisingly eclectic dose of chaotic metalcore pummel, with weird complex parts a la early Dillenger Escape Plan and Daughter's Canada Songs, and

massive atmospheric sludginess a la Old Man Gloom and early Isis.