Beartooth are American melodic hardcore band and this is their fourth album. This new opus contains twelve songs and I had mixed feelings about it prior to listening. Why? Because, as a kid I came from that street punk more oi oriented roots of hardcore and loved my hardcore youth crew and punk oriented with lots of punk and little metal in it. Then, in the middle of the nineties came that so called new school hardcore bands with all that chugga chugga metal oriented riffs and as I also listened to metal in my earlier youth, I embraced bands like Strife, Snapcase, Earth Crisis and similar. Then came that more modern style of hardcore like Beartooth play. But, I really love this band. They play a healthy dose between rough modern hardcore with mosh and metal riffing, but plain old punk rock serves as a platform on which they build their song structures and they do it great. I love the mix between rough and screaming vocals and fantastic melodic vocals. Songs like Devastation, The Past Is Dead and Phantom Pain are my personal favorites, but upon every listening I find something else that makes me smile with satisfaction. Great record indeed!
Primal Age are coming from France and they have been in the scene since 1995. This is their new opus out with WTF Records who are releasing bunch of awesome hardcore punk bands these days. This record contains intro plus eleven songs. Music of Primal Age can be described as what we called in the nineties new school hardcore. Meaning hardcore leaning more on metallic side of things than on punk roots. Guitar riffs here are cutting, sharp and to the point with thunderous drumming which often turns from hardcore groove to almost death metal blast beats in some of the songs. Of course thunderous bass makes rhythm section unbeatable. Guitars are sharp creating darkened atmosphere yet retaining hidden melodic hooks here and there through the songs, which makes them epic. Vocals are best part of it all, bordering from hardcore shouting, screaming to growling depending on the song and atmosphere. Lyrics speak about animal cruelty, ecology, betrayal, friendship, trust and other merry and less merry hardcore themes. My personal favorites are The Devil Is Hidden In Shadow and The Two Heads Monster. Great release by great band.
Slovenian Alo!Stari released their full length album finally! I saw these guys play live in Ljubljana when they supported Lagwagon 2019 and they delivered awesome show. Although it is relatively new band in the Slovenian scene, these guys from Maribor are in no way new to the scene because they played in many bands and projects. The music of Alo!Stari is nineties influenced great melodic skatepunk sounding like all those old school Epitaph and Fat Wreck bands that I grew up with. But, they retained great dose of originality because the lyrics are in Slovenian and also in Styrian dialect and are about personal stuff but relate to current situation in this region. Themes are oppression, getting old, trying to leave and survive in this situation, fun, love and I can relate to all of the songs. Vocals are cool, neither too mellow, nor too harsh and musicianship, harmonies and melodies make you wanna listen to this record over and over again. My personal favorites are: Isto Ko Prej, Nea Vem Kam, Zalubo and Valovi. This is for sure one of the best releases that came out this year.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 