Pride Kills "Life of Hate" CD
[Carjacker]
They may be from Houston, Texas, but this EP starts out sounding a hell of a lot like One Life Crew, complete with a burly chord progression and vocals ripping in with, "Yeah, that's right, motherfucker, Pride Kills 2003..." The vocals are straight yells with a cool wheezy sort of texture to 'em, and musically it's straight up metallic hardcore. Aside from the heavy take on old school riffs they're more metallic than OLC, but not that metal. "Worthless" is even a little melodic at times, while "Friends" is more straightforward and rife with textbook old school hardcore arrangements with that modern chunkiness, and "Thrash Song" is of course generally faster with sort of a crossover thing going on, etc. It's not original, but it's definitely good for what it is. I have no real gripes with the recording. The guitars are heavy as fuck, everything is clear and pretty well mixed, etc. I might like the bass to have more definition in the center of things, but I wouldn't mess with much at all. The layout looks really good, using all black and white with repeating images of a rundown cityscape and nice, clean text. The lyrics are pissed off and go for the throat, which is cool, but things are a little too stripped down for me to get into, bordering on the immature in some respects. "You fucking suck, ran out of luck, What you had to give, I've got no use for it." Most of the tracks deal with the bullshit surrounding the hardcore scene and just working day to day to get by and all that, it's nothing new, but their angle isn't exactly the same take on it, so... I don't care one way or another about the lyrics, because the songs are fucking slick. If you're into this stuff this won't really offer you anything you haven't heard before, but with the number of bands playing this style of hardcore quickly diminishing I'll take as much of this stuff as I can get. Check it out if you're sick of that melodic Swedish death metalcore crap. (7/10)
Running time - 16:19, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: Life of Hate, Friends, Wall of Backs]
Carjacker Records - http://www.carjacker-records.com

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