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Breakdown Clinics

Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 17-Nov-06 @ 12:42 PM

Selected by Kevin Wade: Bands have become so preoccupied with adding fat, mosh-tastic parts to their songs in recent years that even the most downtrodden indie-rock band can be spotted drop-tuning their guitars and practicing their double kicks. If you're going to travel down that path (and more power to you if you do), be sure you know how to do it right; there's nothing worse than a bad breakdown. If the crowd can't continue to flawlessly headbang or make a calculated alteration to their hardcore dancing, you might start to hear some boos. This month, we'll break down a few records that will help you break it down onstage. Class is in session.

Strife In This Defiance (VICTORY,1997) There’s something about being straight edge that just makes you angry. If you can look past Strife’s latter-day indiscretions of breaking edge and turning into a stale sludge-metal band, you’ll find maybe the most essential record ever composed entirely of power chords. No band has ever split their tempos and dutifully rebuilt them with more ire. Drummers, take note: We challenge you to find a single pithy ride-cymbal hit on this entire sledgehammer of a record.

Throwdown You Don't Have To Be Blood To Be Family (INDECISION,2001) You can’t ever question a hardcore band’s heart. Throwdown may not be the most intellectually stimulating band (they have been known to cover “Baby Got Back” in their live set, after all), but with every unintelligible yelp about unity comes a tsunami of a pogo-mosh. You Don’t Have To Be Blood To Be Family very likely has one of the highest ever beakdown-per-minute rates (a stat unfortunately not yet recognized by the RIAA). If hardcore grandfathers Sick Of It All had ever learned how to change tempos, this is where they would have arrived.

Turmoil Staring Back (ABACUS,2005) Whatever Abacus Recordings said to Turmoil to get them to reform in 2005 was a gift to all those who seek to pack more umph into their songs. This retrospective includes the band’s 1999 masterpiece The Process Of... (originally released by Century Media) in its entirety, along with some unreleased gems. Produced by esteemed hardcore knob-twiddler Steve Evetts (Dillinger Escape Plan, Lifetime), Staring Back features some of the most earth-shaking sound quality to be found on a hardcore record.

Diecast Day Of Reckoning (NOW OR NEVER,2001) There are so many bands writing song-long drum fills now that it’s hard to tell the good drummers from the bad anymore. Well, the barefooted, jazz-trained Jason Costa of Diecast knows what he’s doing. There wasn’t anything remotely hip about double bass outside of Scandinavia when Day Of Reckoning hit shelves, and now it’s a sin not to use it. If you want to know where Bleeding Through and Killswitch Engage learned how to break down their blastbeats, now you know.

Beloved Failure On (SOLID STATE,2003) Though they met an untimely demise in 2004, Beloved left an indelible mark on the emocore genre. Failure On’s back and forth of emotional rock and metalcore (with very little overlap) made for an interesting dichotomy now commonly found in the music of labelmates Underoath and Emery. The album’s climax comes in the near-seven-minute epic “Death To Traitors,” which breaks down and elegantly resolves like the fourth movement of a Beethoven symphony (though admittedly not with quite as much lasting influence).

Meshuggah Destroy Erase Improve (NUCLEAR BLAST,1995) There may not be a better album title for learning how to wade through the tempo spectrum. These Swedish metal innovators spent so much time writing in the world’s oddest time signatures (there’s a rumor they consult calculators when they’re brainstorming new music), they probably didn’t even notice that they’d written a record stuffed with breakdowns four years before In Flames had even considered writing a record comprised entirely of “get the fuck up” riffs.

Buried Alive The Death Of Your Perfect World (VICTORY,1999) The hardcore history books may remember Buried Alive frontman Scott Vogel more vividly for his days fronting Terror (he who sells more records gets more credit), but that only makes the hardcore turbulence of Buried Alive seem that much more real. Always having to take a backseat to labelmates Earth Crisis and Snapcase must have really steamed these guys; good thing they knew how to channel that aggression into an enraged 25-minute plea for attention. We feel you, Scott.

Until The End Blood In The Ink (EULOGY,2002) Sometimes a hardcore record is so over the top that it transcends all potential absurdity. The brainchild of Eulogy Recordings founder and Morning Again guitarist John Wylie, Until The End became one of the silliest and fun hardcore bands without ever making reference to anything remotely silly or fun. Blood In The Ink behaves like one massive, album-long breakdown, and the band’s appropriately nicknamed vocalist “Mean” Pete Kowalsky (now of Remembering Never) drops the F-bomb more times than a Tarantino flick.

The Hope Conspiracy Cold Blue (EQUALVISION,2000) There’s no better way to encapsulate the fury on Cold Blue than to consult Webster’s definition of the word raging: “characterized by violent and forceful activity or movement; very intense.” The Hope Conspiracy, led by one helluva pissed-off screamer in Kevin Baker, had one of the most ferocious dispositions of any band (regardless of genre), and their equally as earsplitting breakdowns made them one of the toughest bands to ever hail from the talent-rich Boston scene. , Now that the group have reunited (and have a new album out this fall on Deathwish), the world is most assuredly a louder, if not better, place.

New Found Glory New Found Glory (DRIVE THRU/MCA,2000) Bearing ex-vocalist Chad Gilbert of metalcore stalwarts Shai Hulud on guitar, Florida quintet New Found Glory made it cool for hardcore kids to like pop-punk again. Every song on the band’s breakout major-label debut develops and resolves like a confident hardcore jam; swap out the bubblegum vocal harmonies for a bunch of raucous shouting and screaming, and you’d have one of the hottest hardcore records since Gorilla Biscuits disbanded.