From: USA
Playing: heavy sXe with a touch of emo
in the voice
Could sound like: Refused
Just one song: To defy
Just one song: To defy
I know I've been late. Absent. Same old
shit, 9 to 5 became 8 to 7, and the less you fulfill you commitments,
the more Laziness tightens its grip on you.
No time to write, barely time to
properly listen to hardcore.
But I'm back. With a review I shouldn't
do.
According to the pattern I decided to
give to my explorations, I normally aim at European hardcore (to
consume local, and because the european scene always deserves as much
light as it can get), and only on albums/EP I physically own (nothing
like buying the bands' stuff to support the scene, and objectivity
starts by paying for what you review).
This is not gonna be the case today:
- Abandon is/was a band from California
- and I confess I illegally downloaded their “death of Urgency” album.
But this album being one of the few I
listened to on and on since this spring without getting tired of, it
deserved to be here.
I first heard about the band through an
old issue of the “It's still OK not to drink” australian sXe
fanzine.
Because I didn't know any of the interviewed bands, I checked on the
internets, and whereas Foundation and the others didn't convince me,
I directly connected with Abandon.
They play their sXe political hardcore
in the 90's heavy metal way. So the sound is fat, the riffs not so
much thick than sharp, with the good breaks at the right times and
some tension buildings you can't exhaust, even after repeated
listenings.
What makes this album apart from what
I've already heard in that style is the voice of the singer as it
really brings to life the urgency mentioned in the title. Lots of
bands play heavy music, but few of them manage to make it sound
urgent in the sense you could feel it bursting from their throat and
instruments like they were barely able to control it. It gives to
their political agenda a human and subjective touch that would set
them apart from the hardline so-called warriors. The guys are pissed
off, but they are not here to judge or to whine about the
back-stabbers.
The lyrics
focus on internal turmoils fueled by the outside world and our
incapacity/will to face them.
The overall feeling you get is more of
a kind of mixture between tough sXe and emotionally fueled hardcore,
the result being at the same time powerful, sincere and efficient, a
bit like what Refused used to do.
It took me quite a long time to figure
how to get a copy of the album. The band seems to be on a hiatus
since 2011, their various sites are out-of-date, Catalyst records
became an internet ghost site, Death of a Modernist only sold the LP,
etc...
So, if you want theLP, try Death of a Modernist.
For the CD,if you have time to waste, waste it at
the Catalyst records. But Good Intentions Hardcore seemed more serious (or simply alive).
You are not quite sure, you want to give it an accoustic try? Surprisingly, you can find the album on GrooveShark.
The Abandon blog is also quite... abandoned.
The big cartel may works, but it doesn't deliver in
Europe.
UPDATE: the Waiting on Revolution distro still has some copies.
UPDATE: the Waiting on Revolution distro still has some copies.
Objectivity, with a cloud of soja milk?
One Path For Me
Stuck in the Past
