I once saw Norway˙s Agenda play in my hometown when they were touring like six years ago with Swedes Myteri and the show was great, I was blown away with force and energy that Agenda provided that evening on stage of the small club.
Although I know Norway mainly because of black metal, Stavanger based Agenda play hardcore punk/crust with mainly fast songs, screaming vocals and good lyrics. This is not your usual d-beat clicheed crust band, this is mainly hardcore punk par excellence. There are 10 songs on this record and they are all fantastic, I enjoyed listening to them so much. What I love about the music of Agenda is that besides harsh atmosphere, they also make a great feeling of cold and melancholy with their subtle melodies in the song structures. Besides fast songs, there are couple of more sludge, doomy songs for example Life Left Behind or Road To Hell, which fit perfectly in the soundtrack for apocalypse. Songs like Walls and City Dies Tonight are sure to become your favorites like they are mine. Love this record, would love to see them play live again soon!
Mud Cake Records reissued the 2018. Pense third album and this is a great endeavour to bring this fantastic record to wider audience in Europe.
Pense are Brasilian hardcore punk band formed in 2007.in Belo Horizonte and this is their third album having intro and ten songs. The music these guys play is technical melodic hardcore punk with lyrics in their language meaning Portuguese and Spanish. They played this year at Punk Rock Holiday but unfortunately I missed their set at the Beach stage, hope they will come to Europe again because I would love to see these guys deliver the goods live. The songs are mainly fast, uptempo with enough force and aggression backed with melody to make your little head nod in approval and smile comes to your face. The vocals are harsh, yet screamed and sung at the same time and fit perfectly to the music. Guitars are catchy and imaginative with awesome rythm section backing the whole thing up. I read the English translation to the lyrics and they are a fine mix of personal and political where everyone can find themselves and hold on to the songs. Recommended highlight songs in my opinion: Corpo, Mente, Espirito, then Existencia and Matrix.
Only Attitude Counts have been one of my favorite hardcore bands from Europe since the second half of the 90-ies. Now they have a new record with WTF Records and I have listened and reviewed it for our zine.
Vienna style hardcore is excellent because the guys in Only Attitude Counts, Spidercrew and couple other bands combine hardcore with streetpunk roots making anthems to singalong with, mosh, pogo and hug a sweaty brother or sister in the pit next to you. This new record is no exception to the rule. 16 anthems celebrate the 25 years history of the band and carry the banner of street hardcore high and proud with fast paced songs that make you pump your fist in the air. do a pogo pizzamaker style or mosh with couple of windmill styled dances. Hehe, who listens to hardcore will know what I mean by this. As the highlights of this album I would recommend All Ages, Powertrap, Pick Your Side, My Agenda. The album has a lot of guest appearances and contributions from Rykers, Deafness By Noise, Last Hope and many others. This is a great old school hardcore record for those of us who still believe.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 