No One Deserves To Be Here More Than Me

Though Philadelphia's Blacklisted are certainly a hardcore band, their brand of sonic abuse refuses to play by the rules of the genre, dragging anyone too close to the speakers on a hellish journey into ominous sonic territory. Their previous releases have been uniformly stunning, and on No One Deserves To Be Here More Than Me they really have delivered one of the most riveting listens of recent months.



Like the majority of the tracks contained here, opener "Our Apartment Is Always Empty" rumbles to life in a mid-tempo groove and immediately creates an atmosphere of distinct unease, suffocating you with its discordant crashing and rumbling. What is perhaps most effective about No One is that the band manage to harness the kind of thunderous apocalyptic darkness that Neurosis have made their stock in trade, yet they do so in dramatically shorter songs than the Oakland, California, natives, distilling this sense of foreboding down to its essence and thrusting it uncomfortably beneath the listeners' skin repeatedly. They ensure that things stay uglier than hell, in places playing so out of key it borders on assonance, yet this only serves to make the record all the more riveting, suggesting at any moment they could completely come off the rails in devastating fashion.



Blacklisted also refuse to repeat themselves–"G.E.H (Interlude)" introduces a trumpet into the mix, which also enlivens the phenomenally threatening "I'm Trying To Disappear," a song that conveys its hostility through wailing feedback and an unnervingly restrained performance from vocalist George Hirsch. Elsewhere, the deeply haunting "P.I.G. (The Problem Is G)" is an acoustic strum augmented by creaking strings and wails, and "I Am Extraordinary" imbues its distorted noise with a subtle, off-key melody that manages to be somehow reassuring and unsettling at the same time. The whole thing–like the best hardcore–is kept brief, clocking in at less than 27 minutes, and it's remarkable the band have managed to condense so much into so little time. Any music fan with a taste for Converge, Fucked Up, Gallows, or the aforementioned Neurosis really needs to have this in their life.

Deathwish Inc. http://www.deathwishinc.com