Psychic Ills' debut, Dins, toed several different lines-- between structured compositions and drifting ambience, between growling psychedelia and hazy shoegaze, and between melody and drone. While that may sound nuanced to the uninitiated, the details were often swallowed by scads of swirling, processed guitar that the band's influences necessitated, somewhere between the overly-cited-yet-with-good-reason My Bloody Valentine and Hawkwind. But whether by necessity, as these tracks were collected from vinyl-only EPs, or just the hesitant steps of an unproven band, the structure of the songs on Early Violence are far more predictable than the abrupt switches between the extremes of their debut. Whether you found those changes artful or indulgent, Early Violence at least offers us a different approach.
