So it started in 2006, as they say...
For me, it started way after. I was digging the musical downloads from the Strikedown Records label, going from tough-guy fist-in-your-face hardcore to sensitive intense tortured heavy screamo with assymetric haircuts, back and forth, back and forth, when I heard the first Hardway song .
“Expect coming”.
Which I didn’t expected.
Rough song, lot of energy, heavy guitars, changing rhythms but that won’t lose you, and then, 2.36, a short but noticeable wha-wha moment I won’t label as “funky”, but that instills some fresh air. Definitely something different, my ears focused, and it was the beginning of a backward-play session I only stopped when I bought the EP.
“Towards the light”.
Which met my expectations.
They were quite simple: solid hardcore with a technical touch (from the rhythm section and from the guitar). Fast, furious, but subtle. Far from any verse-chorus-verse, no melodic shit around here, each song has its own structure, so you don’t get the same recipe used on and on. You won’t get neither total de-structuration in a post-math-core-wave-lullaby-prog-systemic fashion. It stays relatively direct, your head will bang, you can be sure of that. Some guitar soli, but short enough to be bearable; some breaks like in “Still at odds” would make you check if they play in the neighborhood; and meanwhile, the drums go on hammering, hammering, hammering. Maybe the only weakness would be the voice. When compared to the variety offered by the other instruments, it sounds a bit uniform, in its Sepultura style. But some shouted all-together verses manage to put some color in it.
I also liked the simplicity of the cover, that very neat rock lost in a white turmoil you don’t know if it is just fog or the lost souls leaking from some sunk ship. Which is more or less what the second song, “Drift away”, is about. Based on this cover, and on the title, I thought the lyrics would be sort of positive. “Always looking at the light at the end of the tunnel”, as they say it.
The first song starts indeed with a kind of posi-fight-to-get-what-you-want touch, but it rapidly turns out to be an “illusion”. And the rest of the lyrics don’t leave any doubt about it. There are mostly about things that don't go well, from demons beheaded but still ready to posses you to “grey future and few hopes, this is all we gonna leave”. Special mention for “Chased by the guilt”, where the (in)famous and too-well-known guilt is portrayed like a beast, its breath on your neck, its claws almost already in your skin. Nice metaphor.
If you want to listen to the album.
If you want to buy it, go Strikedown Records.
And because objectivity is not a crime:
Interview: Hardboiled as ever.
