November 19, 2008

Years Spent Cold Moving Heaven To Hell [1.5/5] If you really just can’t get enough of Slayer riffs over “hawd-koah” breakdowns topped with boneheaded bellowing from a dude who sounds like he’s got full-length mirrors on every wall of a room dedicated solely to nude weight-lifting, well, this is the album for you. Twelve songs...

Suicide Note Empty Rooms [3/5] Suicide Note play hardcore like the Nation Of Ulysses and the Jesus Lizard intended it to be played. All right, so neither of those bands were exactly “hardcore,” but both were experts at distorting pre-conceived notions of the places punk rock could actually go. Especially reminiscent of the former on...

Norma Jean The Anti Mother [4/5] Hyping this album based on the guest appearances alone would be easy. After all, Chino Moreno (Deftones) and Page Hamilton (Helmet) don’t just play on the record, they helped write parts of it. But there’s more here to be excited about, namely the huge artistic strides Norma Jean have...

Mouth Of The Architect Quietly [3.5/5] Quietly, Mouth Of The Architect’s first long-player since 2006’s The Ties That Blind, is anything but subdued; its eight tracks careen through a series of lacerated movements, wandering from dread-filled mazes (“Hate And Heartache”) and introspective hauntings (“Pine Boxes”) to violent exorcisms (“Rocking Chairs And Shotguns”) and sonic booms...

Killing The Dream Fractures [4.5/5] Killing The Dream keep raising the bar, somehow surpassing 2005’s In Place Apart with the impeccable Fractures. So many compositions rooted in pummeling, aggressive hardcore also feature excellent melodies drenched in unbelievably genuine passion, emotion and what seems like pain?musically, lyrically and vocally. While some tracks are more straight-up hardcore...

Hostage Calm Lens [3.5/5] Lens is an incredibly promising debut of creative melodic hardcore that harkens back to early emo acts like few others. Hostage Calm take obvious but pleasant cues from Rain (the background "ahh"s in "Nosebleed Section"), Dag Nasty and Turning Point (the acoustic intro "In So Many Words…" taking direct inspiration from...

Deadbird Twilight Ritual [3.5/5] Deadbird dedicated Twilight Ritual to a close friend who died earlier this year, and this ominous album definitely carries the weight of mortality. The six tracks, most of which are at least seven minutes long, progress through a series of half-speed slowdowns, like a time-lapse documentation of decay. “Feral Flame” goes...

Cold World Dedicated To Babies Who Came Feet First [3/5] If you were fortunate enough to hear the chugging, gang-vocal-filled strain of hardcore swap DNA with hip-hop before nü metal poached both genres’ lamest elements, then this second album from Pennsylvania’s Cold World should sound as familiar as it does completely out of context in...

Zebrahead Phoenix [3/5] On their sixth album, Zebrahead tend to function like a composite sketch of a band, dipping their toes in several different styles without quite claiming any as their own. As their mix of punk and rap loses its signature quality, “Ignite” huddles in the patchier side of Bad Religion’s shadow, while “Hit...