Australian hardcore scene is great and has some really great bands to offer to the world like Deez Nuts, Toe To Toe, Clowns…In Ashes come from Gold Coast, Australia. This quartet plays modern melodic variation of hardcore with many metal influences so they sound more metalcore than classic hardcore band. The album contains 10 songs of sorrow, hope, melody, aggression and despair. The guitar riffs are melodic but also somehow downtuned and there are many atmospheric parts in the songs like “Second of April, 1988”. The vocal parts are mainly harsh, growling and tortured screams, but in a few songs there is also nice melodic clean vocals to counterpart the aggression of the growling screams. The highlight of this album is the song “Isolation” with great guest vocals by Samantha Hurst. In all, this is not a bad album, but I did not like it specially because personally I am not a fan of metalcore modern sound of hardcore.
This is a relative new and young band fresh on New York Hardcore scene. Hailing from Bronx, they released one ep in 2015. and then remained relative inactive due to some lineup changes. Now, they released their first full length album and I love it. The album contains 13 songs and it is a hardcore bomb full of energy and it is what I needed in this times when almost all the bands play the new modern version of hardcore. Enziguri went the other way and they play old school New York Hardcore and their music sounds like a mix of more melodic songs of Agnostic Front and the music of H2O. They kinda reminded me vocally a lot on Toby Morse from H2O. Since those two bands are one of my favourite hardcore bands, this album was listened on repeat for many times and I loved it. Positive lyrics about friendship, streets, having fun, fight, make you jump and make you wanna hug that sweaty kid in the pit next to you. I hope Enziguri will be heard all over the world and become another proof why New York Hardcore scene is one of the best hardcore scenes in the world! Top songs: “Love Wins”, “Amigo”, “No Time”
I dont know, maybe some people that will read this will consider it a blasphemy but I was never considering myself a fan of Rancid. Somehow their records never got to me, never moved me in some way to make me love their music although I know that legions of punk hardcore and skinhead kids consider them to be the best band in the world. They have some punk evergreens for sure, but most of their albums were just too boring for me. This new album is their ninth full length with 17 tracks of street punkrock and ska coming your way. On this new album Rancid explores recent political events that were going on in America and throughout the world. The opener “Track Fast” is just that, kinda little bomb under one minute to prepare the listener for what comes next. “Ghost of a Chance” and “Telegraph Avenue” are nice punkrock anthems with the trademark Rancid mumbled verses, barked choruses and all the other stuff which made them so loved by many. For me the best song on this album is unusually long titled “An Intimate Close Up of a Street Punk Trouble Maker” which is fast paced melodic hit in the head. There are some fillers on this album like “Farewell Lola Blue” and “I Got Them Blues Again” but in all this is good album. Somehow I got the opinion that first half of the album is way better than the second half, but thats just me.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 