New music: Dead Heat - Certain Death





Cot damn! New Dead Heat rips! This track is brilliant combo of hardcore crossover fury, boiling anger and conscious shit. A mandatory listen! Full album to be out via Edgewood Records.

Our leaders will kill us / If we don’t stay strong / In order to lead on / We have to give up / The way that we live / These things that we do
/ All lead us to death / To repeat and start new.

Review: Scarboro - Wolves on the Radio



Scarboro is a NY based punk rock band with a sound that is both aggressive and melodic. Wolves... is pretty good, mid-tempo music that didn't hook me at the start but after a couple of listens, I was sold. My fav must be Another Day. That track isn't an obvious choice as it lacks catchy gang vocals and is on the almost melancholic vibe, but somehow I can sense there's more depth to it than I initially gave it credit for. It just resonates with my soft side, almost making this cold heart of mine melt. It's OK for a man to cry, as long as it's manly tears though! The lyrics are on the personal note and mostly about trying to get by without losing your sanity. I can relate to a lot of it and reading the lyrics I can sense this dude needed to get this shit off his chest. The recording has a raw edge to it but it works just fine for this type of music. If you like it catchy, mid-tempo punk with down to earth attitude you’d better get on this!

WTF Records, 2018

Video: Spirit Crusher - Potential in Kindness



I see potential in kindness
Reaching out to others
Turning strangers into sisters and brothers


Some positive words in this new tune from Spirit Crusher. Band's first LP "Whispers Against the Roar of the World" out soon on The Essence Recs.

Review: Eisberg - Few Will Remain



Eisberg is a name I've heard being thrown around but never really got to hear their sound until now. And straight off the bat, Few Will Remain is a blast. This album has seven tracks and they go hard on all of them. With the first beat of the opening track, Enough Is Enough, I was drawn in by the vibe and energy the band delivers. The record is a NYHC-styled stomper that people into bands like Risk It! or No Turning Back should dig.

Less than twenty minutes in total, the album moves at a brisk pace and doesn’t take any long pauses between action, which works just fine for me. I’m not saying this is super fast, I’d say it’s fast-mid-tempo to fast-tempo mostly. And yes, there’s a lot of chugging grooves everybody likes to get down to.

Check this record out. It’s pretty damned good. Every track is strong and there seems to be a legit mindset and spirit behind the band.

BDHW, 2018

Live: Merauder - Master Killer (feat Stephen Bessac)

Review: Coldstare - Bounce Back



Cold Stare are four dudes from Belgium playing hardcore that sounds like Something's Gotta Give and Scratch The Surface put together. The vibe, the sound, even damn vocals all scream NYHC. And yeah, I forgot the lyrics. They scream NYHC too. Expect some heavy-ass testosterone injection as they drop tales of pride, brotherhood, betrayal and everything in between. These have been recurring themes since the beginning of hardcore but as long as human beings are fake, irrational and self-destructive, it's all valid topics to explore. Nothing to make you rethink your existence, but who knows? Maybe being down for the crew is the stuff that's been missing in your life? Read that shit and try to apply these principles in your daily life.

The title track is a personal favorite of mine for its positive vibe and good use of gang vocals. Time To Prove is another one I wouldn’t skip. Short yet dope track.

I would give it much higher rating but at times I felt it was longer than it needed to be. Not that they overcomplicate things, it’s just in the second half of the album there are moments when things start to drag a bit. But it doesn’t take away that this is a cool ass record that does a lot of what I like in hardcore.

Like I said, in many ways, the album is a blatant homage to old Agnostic Front Madball and so on, but there's nothing wrong with that. It’s a basic premise executed well. If you haven't heard it yet, do get on that.

WTF, 2018

Interview: Mindwar



Up for some heavy ass NYHC worship? Then step right up. Belgium's Mindwar is up and coming name on the European hardcore map and their latest EP, Hollow, has an energy that I really like. I could hear Backtrack, No Turning Back and even some Blacklisted influence in these tracks. They got all the ingredients of that style right plus the lyrics that anyone feeling down, angry or just dealing with some awkward situations can relate to. Check out the interview to learn more about these boys.

Can you us give a quick introduction to Mindwar and explain a little how you got started playing music together?
Mindwar is basically a big "band of brothers" (literally!) Anthony (vocals) and Emanuel (guitar) are in fact brothers and I've known these guys for over 19y so we're practicly family. We' all grew up in the same city and share more or less the same interests, one of them being hardcore. After a few years of going to shows together we felt like the Belgian scene was missing something. Beatdown was very popular at that time (thank god those days are over, everyone acted as if they grew up in the hood or some shit looking like they were living in a fucking trailerpark) and we were more into the groovier "I wanna stomp holes in the floor and stagedive headfirst into a brick wall" type of hardcore. Nobody was doing that at the time so that's when we came up with the idea of starting our own band. At first we just jammed either in mine or in Anthony and Emanuel's backyard, just the 3 of us goofing around. Things started speeding up when we invited long-time friend Jelle to the party. At that time he didn't even know how to play drums, still he was our best bet for making this band kinda work. Recently we added Andy to our ranks as a 2nd guitarist and now here we are, just released our ep "Hollow".

Give us some details on the upcoming ep Hollow. Is it going to be along the lines of the demo and generally, what kids should expect from it?
Our ep is basically the demo 2.0. We wrote the songs for our demo like 3-4 years ago and to be honest back than we had no idea what we were doing or how a "Mindwar-song" was supposed to sound like, we just wrote whatever we felt like writing. The demo was pure hardcore worship that included every element we liked about the genre at that time. While writing for our ep I feel like we really found our sound and stepped up our game as far as songwriting goes. Since the release of our demo we all grew so much both as musicians and as people and I think that you're able to hear that growth when you listen to the ep. The hooks are bigger, the riffs are heavier… We just wanted to be the best version of Mindwar we could possibly be and write the best Mindwar tunes we could possibly write.

Review: Peace Of Mind - Penance



Peace Of Mind rep Germany, one of the strongest scenes in Europe, and this is their newest baby. Penance is 12-track strong and delivers heavy-ass hardcore with a healthy dose of thrash vibe that is so hyped in the scene right now. Musically, it's alright. Nothing that stands out in the current hardcore state of the art, but nothing they should be ashamed of neither. Listening to some of the riffs it's clear the band handles their shit like a pros, but because the head-turning moments are so few the music gets bland at times. Nonetheless, you can hear they put some effort, skills and heart into these tracks.

The vocals are whatever, took me a while to get used to but I give'em a pass. To be honest, every time there are guest vocals on some track I think how much better this record would sound if they went for more harsh delivery instead of high-pitched screams that remind me of that First Blood guy. I hate this style of singing. Even worse, I am not an expert but there's probably a heavy dose of studio engineering needed to make the human voice sound like that which kills any human emotions the singing should convey. As a default, more Jeff Perlin less Carl Schwartz on the vocals is always right.

Some harsh words have been said here, but fuck that review and check for yourself cause chances are you're gonna like at least part of it.

Dead Serious Records, 2018

Why I'm Broke: Humanity Is The Devil deluxe edition


Source

You can trust Knives Out team this shit is gonna be top quality.

New blood: Last Orders



Cold Hard Truth, Crippler LBU, Ironed Out, Proven... these are just some of the bands members of Last Orders had their dirty hands in. If you know anything about LBU scene you know it reads like who is who over there, meaning quality is guaranteed. Last Orders is more on the relaxed side of things, especially when it comes to subject matter that revolves around beer, fried chicken and telling hipsters to FUCK OFF... All acceptable topics for a hardcore song. Check out the interview with Ryan (guitar) and Louis (vocals).

First off, Last Orders - give us some overview of the band. How did you get started?

Ryan: Bunch of mates that talked about doing an old school sounding band for a while. Ended up all fitting together well with everyone being on the same page as to what they wanted this band to be....

Louis: Ry (Guitars) had an idea to start a new band but wanted to try something a little different. So he approached Louis (Vocals) who was looking to start another band but wanted to do vocals on his own. After that Ry spoke with Joe (Guitar), Louis chatted to Jake (Drums) and finally Joe asked Skel (Bass) who was up for doing something after taking a few years out from playing in a band.

There’s no money and no fame in playing hardcore, so why do it?

Ryan: We do it because we love it. The music, the message and the people we meet along the way.

Louis: For me I've always done it for two reasons. Firstly, as a release and secondly because in a world that is hard to get your voice heard without diluting your message, hardcore is a great platform to get whatever it is off your chest and spit your rage (so to speak). It's never, ever been about money or fame.