Regardless of how literally the band name "Trauma Bond" should be taken, this is a project of two members, vocalist Eloise Chong-Gargette and instrumentalist Tom Mitchell, which is, according to the Bandcamp description, "blending a shared love of violence, noise and metal to concoct a visceral exploration of aggression". So indeed it is the grind that is the core bonding experience here. Well, perhaps the proper term is "powerviolence", but even all the minute subcategorization is not gonna do a lot of justice to the way Trauma Bond. Suffice to say, this is a fast punk release, and even though Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone is the longest of the band's releases, it still falls short of the usual 30 minute cutoff mark for LPs in most genres.
I remember a while ago when I watched "Come & See" specifically because I was reviewing an album of the same title. For a brief moment I considered seeing Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring before reviewing this one. Yes, having music conceptualized around the yearly seasons has been done by everyone from Vivaldi to Negură Bunget, and this one is only the third out of four (guess which season it's themed after), so maybe I still have time to watch that film before the last album completes the tetralogy. Surface level aesthetics aside, one would have to dive into the lyrics to actually get something out of the summer connotations of this one.
That's not to say that the music on Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone is completely the same as the ones on the previous records, just that their seasonal connotations are not obvious in the music. However, Trauma Bond, both here and on the previous records, operated in a way that gave each of their songs a bit of its own personality. A lot of it did follow what one would expect from powergrind, hence why you would find a lot of shorter 1-3 minute long tracks, but this album especially imbues each track with something ranging from noise rock to more chuggy metalcore to crushing sludge to industrial tinges to slabs of proper noise electronica, with this kind of variation being felt both on the instrumental and on the vocal front. Considering that about a third of the tracklist is taken by the 9-minute long closing track, most of the aforementioned dynamics are packed into a pretty short package, with "Dissonance" pushing the further the band has ever pushed into droning sludge and ambient.
Considering how each subsequent release increased in runtime, I wouldn't be surprised if the tetralogy's fall themed closer might clock in at over 30 minutes, even though that would imply breaking hardcore mold and incorporating even more sounds. Seems plausible.
