Due to some unforseen circumstances I didn't manage to keep on top of my reviews for these months, so I have merely listed the movies I watched and the ratings I have given them out of 10. The reviews will return for August/September!
Live Young Records, a DIY label based in the US, hints at the heated cultural rivalry between Boston and New York while promoting the release of a Split 10” Vinyl EP featuring a band from each of those cities. It’s that rivalry that is used to build a ‘common ground’ for the release, which is a collaboration of two brazenly heavy bands, each with a reputation garnered from hard work and a take-no-prisoners sound.
The first half of the split belongs to New Yorker’s Kills & Thrills, a hard-hitting East Coast band that tear into the EP with ‘Come Alive’, a track with more balls than a tennis court. The pace of the song is terrifying at times, thankfully letting up for a few bars in the middle, before the screaming banshee vocals kick down the doors and bring sledgehammers to the walls. The song fades to a close with disjointed guitars, but that’s certainly not where the band is done with us.
‘Live Young’ chimes in with deformed guitars and a yelp of ‘wasting my life away’, soon thundering along. I can hear a lot of US hardcore giants ‘Every Time I Die’ in this track, the attitude of the vocals combined with a never-say-die musical accompaniment making a big impression. Kills & Thrills sign off with a cover of Motorhead’s iconic ‘Ace of Spades’, which ticks all of the boxes a Motorhead cover should. It’s rare that a band can make you not care that it isn’t Lemmy that can be heard, but here it really doesn’t seem to matter.
Boston’s own Our Lives open their side of the Split EP with the hardcore ‘Sky Fire’, with progressive chugging providing an ever changing and advanced backdrop for the vocals to tear across. The song is a juggernaut, leaving your ears ringing and all expectations after the first track blown out of the water. This is a beast of a track, proving what this band is made of, despite being together not much longer than 6 months. It goes to show that success can be gained from simply knowing how to play some kick-ass heavy music with style. ‘The Cleansing Plan’ is from the much grimier spectrum of this genre, but it’s just as hard hitting as the first track, with vocals more distorted this time around and the venom being spat leaving you feeling more pent up than you did before the track started.
‘Cop Killer’, an Ice-T cover which is similarly dedicated to the LAPD by a monotonous voice as the song opens, is a sign of what Our Lives have in terms of animalistic fury. Screams bring in fast paced punk chords and furious drums. The vocals are then yelped with brash intensity, before the song’s title is thrust into the sky with gang shouts. It’s a brutal song, its social commentary strangely parallel to the recent riots in the UK, providing nothing more than a ‘f*ck the system’ attitude, with little brains behind it, just the intension to rustle some feathers. Agree with it or not, the constant shouts of ‘f*ck the police’ and ‘tonight we get even’ shows that the spirit of punk is alive and well.
This release is just as frantic as it is visceral, which makes for great listening and an awesome chance to discover two fantastic bands, who don’t seem to be trying to outdoing each other on this EP, which makes the experience that much more enjoyable. An honest and compelling group of songs.
