Human Demise - Of Wicked Men and Their Devices

Being that it is band’s third album already, I had a clue what to expect but in reality the sheer aggression and energy that fills Of Wicked Man… just blew me away. If you love the way Cleveland’s style sounds, the menacing tone of Ringworm and the way One Life Crew delivers, you’re at home with this album. It is powerful and hits straight to the gut, bringing song after song of that vicious and dark atmosphere, all while making sure the music stays aggressive from start to finish.

There’s no radical departure from what they did on previous releases, but it is all presented in a more mature and condensed package. No-nonsense, every song hits hard. It’s hard to listen to this stuff without letting the adrenaline and aggressive urges go into effect. And don’t confuse it with that Holy Terror hype that has seem to be going on recently.

The album is filled with high points and its best when listened as a whole. With their stabs at Clevo-style Human Demise manages to hold their own and does not fall into any clichés. The raw and gritty hardcore that fills Of Wicked Men… from the start to finish matches quality of any other hyped album of 2012. Human Demise has made its mark with today’s hardcore audiences by making it sure listeners can always count on the band to deliver in terms of a quality.

WTF RECORDS

Cast Iron Jaw - Bound By Ignorance

Cast Iron Jaw is a new band from the UK hardcore scene with a sound that doesn’t deviate much from the metallic beatdown style already done by number of bands, but that’s alright. The first track takes on slow-to-fast beatdown sound and the album gets progressively heavier as it evolves. Sometimes it’s slow and heavy with a pounding double-bass action, but there are moments when the band takes on a faster vibe.

A critical measure of how successful is an album of this kind is how much variety is in the tracks without drifting too far from the core sound. In other words, how well all the elements go together so the album can be enjoyable from start to finish without using any cheap tricks like shitty clean vocals or whack rapping parts. And we all know that some bands got no shame when it comes to mixing hardcore with this type of crap and the results are usually pathetic. In case of Cast Iron Jaw, the album isn’t void of missteps, but it delivers what you would expect from such record. The sound is hard, the songs are nicely put together and vocals sound like they wanna cause a serious damage to the listener.

While the production is not as beefy as it should, some of the parts here still sound heavy enough while others lack a bite. I also would also get rid of some of the unnecessary passages in the songs which doesn’t add anything and just make the songs sound less focused. Overall, while not as intense as Shattered Realm, whose influence can be heard in some of the slower parts of the album, Bound By Ignorance is well crafted and strong album. I hope for even better next one.

BadAss!! Records

Traveler - Nothing Lasts Long Enough

Traveler plays melodic and emotional hardcore that totally does not appeal to my tastes but I give them credit for being good musicians and having some kind of vision where they wanna go with this band. Plus, they played a show with No Zodiac and Rude Awakening, which actually is the best thing about them from my ignorant point of view. They seem like honest guys so give them a try if you in a mood for some heart melting melodies. Download.

Ante Up - See You In Hell

Official music video by Ante Up performing See You In Hell.

Listen to 'Life, By The Code' by Cleveland's Search Bloc

Life, By The Code is the title of new EP by Search Bloc. Four songs of that vicious Cleveland straight edge hardcore you either love or hate. You can listed to the entire EP here or after the jump. Life, By The Code is expected to be released on Seventh Dagger Records.

Listen to new songs from The Wrath!

The Wrath has posted rough version of the new songs on their Bandcame page. This new stuff sounds pretty bad-ass and definitely makes me hungry for the new album! More info about future release will probably drop soon!

Booze Riot releases '.​.​.​Strikes Back!' EP

Booze Riot, a punk outfit from DC, will soon be putting out our first non-live, studio ep. Check out the new songs here.

New releases from Set Me Free

Set Me Free, an Italian straight edge band, has dropped two releases last April, in case you missed it. Walkin' The Line, a CD EP released by Open Up Records (Belgium), and split 7" with Motivation from Hungary released by Honest for Truth. Here you can listen both.

Ralph Macchio - Forget The Past

The song is taken from Welcome To Your Doom album, out on Caustic Records

Elapse Interview

The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.!

The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.

Can you give some background on Elapse for those out there who are not familiar with the band? How and when it all started?
The members of Elapse are Love Thübeck on vocals, David Shanks on drums, Simon Flack and Robin Eriksson on guitars, and me, David Tapojärvi, on bass guitar. This band started around 2005 before I played with them. They played all sorts of metal with a lot of different influences, and in 2008 they found their way into hardcore and recorded a 3-track demo under the name of "40+ Bareback Hunterz". I joined them in late 2009 and in 2010 we became "Elapse". We recorded a demo/EP called "General Errors" and in 2011 we released "The Mockracy".

You have just put out a new EP called “Storm”. Can you tell us about that?
It's an EP containing five songs. It was recorded here in our home town Örebro a few months ago and we're just really happy that it's out!

My first thought was that the title might allude to Judge, but is there any other meaning to ‘Storm’?
The title was a bit longer at first. I had a title flying around in my head which was "Storm on a path", then Simon suggested to cut it down to just "Storm". It points to the feeling that nothing ever goes right. That your path, so to speak, is just doomed to fail. I guess it's a bit like the classic "rain cloud over head"-thing.

Is there any chance that ‘Storm’ will be released on any physical format?
"Storm" was actually just released physically. We made a CD version out of it ourselves and it turned out great. On our previous EP "The Mockracy" we had great artwork and all that, but we just slipped hand written CD-R's in to a plastic pocket, which worked okay, but this time we thought if would be fun to make something more "real" out of it. Now it looks like a proper CD release. We've also been talking about putting "Storm" on vinyl, but we're not sure what will happen there. It's also available for free download at a bunch of places, and will soon be on Spotify too.


Lyrically, these songs carry a rather negative tone. What is the main driving force behind your lyrics? What motivates you to write the way you do?
The songs on "Storm" are not necessarily based on concept, but I wrote a lot about things that I guess are in the same frame. It's about finding out what's good for you and what isn't. What you need in life and what you don't. About watching yourself from a different perspective. I would say "Worn Out" is a great example of perspective, where you find yourself looking back at stuff that has been tearing you down, but you've come out stronger and wiser than before. I just felt that I had to get that off my chest.
The motivation behind writing lyrics varies a lot. It can be anything from the society to a line in a movie, even though the song might not end up being about the thing that pushed my buttons in the first place.

The world seems to be in a shitty state these days. How do you feel about things like the financial crisis, unemployment, general instability in many people lives?
Obviously it's not a good thing at all and it's a shame what happens in this world. It's too bad there's more than one way people can feel about this.

Your country is seen as economically stable and generally friendly place to live. How does it all look like from the Swedish perspective?
I guess every country looks nice on a post card. I immediately think about a party called the Sweden Democrats. Their view on immigrants is not the friendliest and they've certainly helped the face of Sweden turn uglier.

What are some of the shows you have played that really stick out in your mind?
For me there are three shows that comes to mind, and I think that the rest of the band agrees. First, the release show for The Mockracy was just awesome, unfortunately David wasn't drumming on this show because of injured shoulders. We hadn't done that many shows before that one, but at this one it was fantastic to see that people had given some of their time to learn our songs.
A few months before that, we played a festival in Linköping called Fat Fest. It was the first time we played outside of Örebro, and there were really cool bands playing there, such as Trapped Under Ice, Bane and Hårda Tider.
The third one that comes to mind we did not that long ago in Gävle. We went there with two other bands from from our town (Chain Reaction and Hårda Bud) and it was amazing. It's a floor stage so they compensated with stools that they kicked around the floor to "stage dive" from.

What other bands out of Sweden you support these days?
There are several great bands from our town, such as Dead Reprise, Chain Reaction, Hårda Bud and Chastise. Then from all around Sweden we've got Lesra, Angers Curse, Bitter Taste of Life, Guilty, Lose the Life and Agent Attitude. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.

After the EP is out, what’s next for Elapse?
To play as much as possible, basically. We've been hearing a lot of bands talk about this thing called "Euro tour", and it feels like we need to look into that.