I’ve given this record a coupla weeks to soak, and every time I’ve returned to it, hoping that it’d elevate somehow with my own revelation, instead I found myself thinking that its sooooo no longer 1999, and I’m so through with screamo or mathematical riffing or emotional refrains.
What’s the problem with hardcore, since it was somewhat esoteric– speaking from someone who’s seen Botch, Dillinger Escape Plan, Cave In, Poison the Well, play some of their earliest shows ever– and having lived smack dab in north carolina on the climax of “emo hardcore” as a minor scene– is that it’s now a commercialized joke. So how is preserving this once underground and somewhat ambitious genre possible? I guess you’re either in, or out, and if you’re in these days, everyone seems to share the same wardrobe, rave about the same stuff, maybe what Sleeping by the Riverside once were, or what Braid could have been, whatever, all stemming from the same suburban sicknesses– but I guess I am speaking about American born hardcore and not Norwegian.
Musically though, its hard to tell the difference with this record and the billions I’ve heard before it, but I’ve also observed that mediocrity seems to be overlooked on account of the fact that contemporary hardcore is more about creating scenes than radical music. In the record Plague Waters it’s obvious that the package is all there, hooks, those metered melodic parts (”Lucid River”, nearly identical to the next), even top notch production. So as a tribute to “hardcore” it probably does some justice; unfortunately, it’s just that that scene has proven far too easily to outgrow.
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