Slow Speed: Deep Owls pounds pretty consistently (sometimes like a headache) throughout. The tracks, much like June of 44, arrive like the underbelly of an assembly line; the machines persevere until they crash. "By Popular Demand" is twin to "Sanctioned in a Birdcage", operating against the very world it envelops. Rich Fessler is the time bomb traversing the streets: poised and inconspicuous on the outside, but tried, disgusted, cramped and confrontational internally. Slow Speed: Deep Owls is an ugly gladiator.

Bear Claw effectively slams its paws on each instrument, creating a great deal of beautiful damage on tracks like "Distant Apology" and "Ask and You Shall Receive". The only issue facing Slow Speed� is what results when ugliness lacks relative beauty (the listener moves, listens and understands). Experimental sometimes becomes a mask for the mundane or less talented, and not only do the songs sometimes like an experiment that ran its course 3 tracks earlier, but whenever Fessler's lyrics and vocals travel much beyond one's expectations of a domestic dispute, the brutality is unnatural. Bear Claw has a perfect EP hidden in Slow Speed: Deep Owls, but its indiscriminate relentlessness plays against its potential full length appeal.