- God bless those folks at Tenzenmen. They're just hoovering up a ridickerous amount of music around this South East Asia and not least from our own little burg of Australia and there-in there's a bunch of stuff they've got from my own little fly-speck, the humble town of Brisbane. They're ever so kindly releasing stuff for some bands that are awesome and, which, a little shame-facedly, sometimes I didn't even know existed. Take the case of Idylls: I just don't know where they sprang from. For my next failure, I'm sure I'll put lots of noses out of joint, but, to my mind, rhythmic tightness wouldn't be the first quality I'd mention of hardcore from Queensland. Idylls bucks that trend completely. The complex, jazzy, poly-rhythms just jump all over the place, but the drums and guitars are completely in sync, this never feels one iota less than rigidly precise. Their album for Tenznmen, Farewell All Joy is my favourite kind of hardcore: mathcore. The sort of stuff Rolo Tomassi are so good at; turns out I don't need a cute little girl with a voice like a meatgrinder to make me enjoy mathcore: these four lads do away with any of the extra, gimmicky stuff and focus on pushing out complicated rhythms at a breakneck pace, screaming their heads off all-the-while. The screaming is as noteworthy as anything else, here. I don't know how many members of Idylls join in on the vocal assault, but the range of their bellowing is anywhere from a gravelly, guttural roar, to a high pitch banshee wail and everything in between and they know how to deploy each different type to the best theatrical effect. Of the ten songs on the record, in a hap-tip to hardcore of the old, no-messing-about variety, four come in at less than a minute, and the whole thing is done in around twenty. For the most part the onslaught never lets up - nothing post-hardcore here, thankyou! Although they do throw in 4 minutes of idle strumming and menacing ambience at the end, just to mess with ya. I really can't understand the words, but I'd love to read a lyric sheet, with titles like Funerals In Queensland, Swine-Virgins-Utopiates or Amps For God-Plague Hell, I've a funny feeling Idylls have more interesting things to say than your average bunch of sub-literate meatheads, or an acute case of word salad. Whatever the case may be, it won't affect the amount of fun I've had with Idylls and Farewell All Joy. They are a highly polished and completely unexpected addition, not just to Australian hardcore, but to the sound as a whole.

- Chris Cobcroft.