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.