 |
THIS DAY FORWARD
This Day Forward (Break Even)
Reviewed by Jason Thornberry
It is curious, the parallels one can draw between the newer music known now as 'hardcore', and the thrash-metal of twelve years ago, particularly grindcore: the vocal styles (shouty, screamy, and otherwise guttural--a bit like if Napalm Death’s Barney was singing with Ink and Dagger), the crunchy, chugga-chugga palm-muted guitar riffing, and song arrangements are immensely similar. Just the fact that This Day Forward built each of the ten tracks on this debut around guitar riffs puts them more in league with Posessed than, say, Bane. This isn’t your daddies’ hardcore son. This isn’t very much like Black Flag circa 1982, or even Stupids circa 1988. Nah, guys who have the Circle Jerks "Wild in the Streets" on vinyl will scratch their heads in wonder when a newer breed of kids blast This Day Forward from their bedrooms next door. How are the instruments used any differently in this music than in primo Slayer or Anthrax? I can’t find a difference! The same guitar lines are all over earlier Testament albums, only sped up here, and tuned dowwwn. The vocals here are generally screamed, and…gee, the drummer really likes his china-boy cymbal on this cd, doesn’t he? Hardcore today, is just the same as 80’s thrash-core (Dark Angel, Nuclear Assault, D.R.I., Testament, DBC, Kreator, Wargasm), but with much shorter hair. Back to those vocals: they’re shouted some of the time, spoken in a hoarse voice at other moments, and flat-out screamed the rest. A kid called Shaw handles this task, and seems like he’s on the verge of acquiring some tough vocal nodules (they were rumored to be the source of a shift in style for Paradise Lost from doomy metal to synth-rock, with actual singing involved). Nonetheless, Shaw does a fine job of getting his point across without sounding like a lot of neu-school hardcore singers do: a caricature of a nagging mom. With an anvil on her foot. This is a good album, no matter what they wanna call it (Pennywise play sped-up heavy metal disguised thinly as punk. So did Ludichrist and, at one point Metallica. In the 80’s.). I’m looking forward to the next installment from this group.
© 2000 - Jason Thornberry