Latin For Truth – Eleven Eleven
Latin For Truth and their album Eleven Eleven is really really good but flawed. It’s like a combination of Living With Lions, New Found Glory and some good but semi-ridiculous pseudo-heavy East coast-y hardcore parts. I guess it’s posi popcore. There’s some great riffage and some killer melodies, but on more than one occasion the (Read more…)
Four Year Strong – Explains It All
Does an entire covers album full of 90’s alternative radio hits sound like a good idea for a hardcore-influenced pop-punk band? I didn’t think so either, but that’s exactly what Four Year Strong’s latest release, Explains It All is. Bad move space cadet. Now before you judge me, know that this isn’t a tribute, but (Read more…)
Strike Anywhere – Iron Front
How good is Strike Anywhere? I mean, seriously? Their new album Iron Front (the band’s first since 2006′s Dead FM) is full of potently blistering melodic hardcore punk. It isn’t anything you haven’t heard before from Strike Anywhere, but Iron Front is razor-sharp; more focused and biting than anything else the band has released. Vocalist (Read more…)
Polar Bear Club – Chasing Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany is the city where The Beatles cut their teeth in the early 1960′s and has, thus, become somewhat of a mythical place in the history of rock music. So even though that isn’t the context that it’s presented in here on Polar Bear Club’s latest, Chasing Hamburg, it almost makes sense that PBC (Read more…)
Coalesce – Ox
Writing about heavy music and not sounding (at least marginally) like an idiot is a difficult thing for me. I mean, how many times can you use words like “crushing,” “thunderous,” “dense,” and “complex” before it all starts to read the same? That being said, I’m going to try to do the impossible here because (Read more…)
Police & Thieves – Amor Y Guerra
Amor y Guerra is a collection of Police & Thieves’ three EP releases up to this point along with a few previously unreleased songs. The DC band features ex-members of Worn Thin and plays straightforward hardcore that’s a little melodic without really being melodic at all. Not that there is anything wrong with that, right? (Read more…)
Transit – Stay Home EP
Transit is a Boston-based quintet that, on their latest EP Stay Home, makes me want to do just that and stay home listening to these six songs all night. These songs are filled with unabashedly passionate emotional hardcore that’s got (for good measure) one foot still in the pop punk pool. The guitars are technical (Read more…)
After The Fall – Fort Orange
Did you know that Fort Orange was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland and was on the site of the present-day city of Albany, New York? Did you also know that Fort Orange is the latest blistering album from melodic-hardcore band After The Fall who (non-coincidentally) call Albany home. While I wouldn’t classify (Read more…)
North Lincoln – Midwestern Blood
Two years in the making, North Lincoln’s new album Midwestern Blood was definitely worth the wait. It might not blow you away (at first) but it is more than damn solid, plus these dudes are from Grand Rapids, and who doesn’t like Grand Rapids? Anyhow, the album takes cues from the likes of both Samiam (Read more…)
