"vegan straight edge sounds like a combination of the following: a vivisector being curb-stomped, Karl Crisis firing a machine gun for no particular reason, Confront, Negative FX, James Ismean touching himself in front of a full body mirror while looking into the blackness of his soul, the platonic idea of justice manifested in the material world via sound waves, the United States of America, Youth of Today, the internal suffering of Calvin Coolidge, the part in the expendables where Terry Crews picks up a warhead and throws it into a helicopter, and XchorusX."
The Noose demo rules. Period. If you haven't downloaded it yet,don't tell anyone and get it here. Step two: Add their blog to your google reader. Now go order a demo and patiently wait by your mailbox for it to arrive.
Arrivederci dickheads. See you next summer and enjoy the traffic.
Labor Day Weekend always kinda sucks. If you got to go to this, chances are you had a pretty good Labor Day Weekend.
PS- To the crowd at that show: a big fuck you. Only a handful of people going off, with most people looking around, worrying that their aviators will get broken or their vintage tee messed up. Lame.
Depending on your age, you might not have ever known a time where Victory Records put out good music. To be honest, when I was in high school, I considered the catalog pretty hit or miss. For every good album that came out (OLC Crime Ridden Society anyone?) it felt like two Doughnuts albums were released. Anyway, to me, the big four were always as follows: Earth Crisis, Snapcase, Strife and Integrity. Everybody has an opinion regarding these four, but usually every hardcore kid can get behind one or two of the big four. Now imagine a band taking the best things those bands had to offer and mixing them into one project along with some good elements of 90s hardcore. What you'll have my friends is Unlearn.
Listening the demo, you can hear so many elements that take you back to the days of oversized t-shirts and choker necklaces, but it's mixed so well that it really gives it a sound of it's own. The vocals will clearly remind you of an ill-behaved gentlemen from Cleaveland and the riffs feel like a marriage between Strife and Earth Crisis with some technical guitarwork thrown in that is reminiscent of "Steps" era Snapcase or some of Don Devore's work with Ink & Dagger. In other words: It fucking destroys. Probably up there with xNoosex, Bad American and Stick Together as my favorite four demos of 2010. You can bet your ass that I will be headed to the Lehigh Valley to catch their live set at some point. Here is a sampling of their live set, which looks just as good as the demo sounds recorded:
Earl rolls through and cleans everything up tonight, sending dudes with boards to the water like dope fiends finding out new testers are out. Watched the cameras for a while and 1st street went from a mess to some pretty impressive waves be had before dark. Screenshot is from 7th street. Not as many people out, but not as many waves being ridden either. Looks kind of inviting until you locate the people in the water. Looks like someone is going to have a helluva drop in or a helluva beatdown coming his way on that one.
Some new music to check: Bad American. Angry hardcore with an early 80s slant. I've heard a lot of different band names thrown around as far as the sound and all are pretty accurate, but you can read those on the band pages below . The other info that gets thrown around is the whole ex-members deal. Members of Weston, Carpenter Ant and Rancor (oh and Grow too). Forget what those bands sound like though and just know that if you dig those bands, you're getting something brand new and just as awesome. I was way into Fresh Meat (a former project), but this is faster and waaay more pissed.
I haven't gotten home to catch them yet, but they're part of a group of Valley bands that I am psyched on seeing or seeing again (B.A., Secret Cutter, Unlearn). I included the demo and the 7 inch, both of which are sold out, or are close to being sold out. The vinyl and demo are worth tracking down, even if they aren't repressed. Get into it and support.
