January 17, 2008

Scary Kids Scaring Kids Scary Kids Scaring Kids [3/5] …Plus some things you didn’t. If you’re a Scary Kids devotee, start swooning now. If you’d rather pluck out your eyebrows with a cheese grater than listen to their moody, apocalyptic anthems, there’s not a chance in hell their sophomore album will persuade you...

Ruiner Prepare To Be Let Down [4/5] Someone really needs to let proponents of the Law of Attraction know that a hardcore band from Baltimore just threw their belief system into the street and let a tractor-trailer run over it. The Law of Attraction is the New Age belief that what one says and...

Madball Infiltrate The System [3/5/5] As the landscape of hardcore changes over time, it’s nice to have a model of consistency encapsulating a genre that once dominated the punk and hardcore scene. Madball haven’t been short on adversity through their history, which keeps their music as urgent and real as ever. Infiltrate The...

Full Blown Chaos Heavy Lies The Crown [4/5] The third full-length from New York hardcore/metal titans Full Blown Chaos holds to the pattern of their first two. So if you’re down with an endless series of mosh pit-propelling riffs and breakdowns, plus the occasional solo, while some thick-necked (and thicker-waisted) dude barks at...

The Fucking Wrath Season Of Evil [3/5] “The Fucking Wrath is out to destroy everything.” Or so it says on this upstart crust-sludge trio’s MySpace page: “The end of your life will be but a speck in our all trampeling [sic] awesomeness upon the decadently delighted forgotton [sic] souls of many.” Which is...

Cloak/Dagger We Are [4/5] If you can overlook the hipsters who’ve embraced it, the artful, future-primitive roar pioneered by bands like Fucked Up has been the best thing that’s happened to hardcore, creatively speaking, since Revolution Summer. With We Are, Richmond, Virginia’s Cloak/Dagger join the party, puking out a debut that sounds like...

Between The Wars Death And The Sea [3.5/5] Between The Wars straddle the fence between full-throttle thrash and pit-stomping hardcore-imagine Iron Maiden and Bold duking it out. Indeed, guitarists Bill Henderson and Jon Tarella boast that level of instrumental dexterity, with deft dueling guitars sparring off in every section of every song. The...

Arch Enemy Rise Of The Tyrant [4/5] Seven albums in, you’d think Swedish melodic-death dealers Arch Enemy would be at least beginning their initial ascent over the proverbial shark-especially after two relatively stiff (but somehow profile-enhancing) releases in 2003’s Anthems Of Rebellion and 2005’s Doomsday Machine. Yet Rise Of The Tyrant is far...