Unbroken "The Death of True Spirit" CD
[Indecision]
Okay, I'll be as forthright as necessary here: If you like any form of metallic hardcore and don't know about Unbroken, you are a god damn fool. Alright? This long overdue CD reissue contains both of their out of print full-lengths - "Life. Love. Regret." and "Ritual" - which originally came out in the early- to mid-90's on New Age Records. The band broke up eight fuckin' years ago, but I still listen to them on a fairly regular basis, and in the mid-90's "Life. Love. Regret." was a fucking benchmark of emotional, relevant metalcore, and even though their influence still leaves a mark today, their sound has never been duplicated. No one has even come close to the uniquely menacing, throat shredding vocals, and while some of their riffs have been lifted, the intensity of their songwriting has certainly not. Fucking "D4" is one of the greatest songs of all time, and if that shit doesn't make you just want to annihilate life I don't know what would. The same goes for the stellar breakdown towards the end of "Final Expression". And the verse riff in "Blanket"? Amazing. And "Ritual" isn't without its moments either. The breakdown in "Zero Hour" is certainly murder worthy, and "My Time" brings in some energetic picking patterns and more overt metal influences (compared to some of the other earlier songs), while "Remain" is somewhat more melodic (plenty of octave chords) and uses great tradeoffs between spoken and shouted vocals, and the instrumental "Cold Front" fuses clean guitars with nice melodic lead lines and bass runs. Now, admittedly the recordings had their issues back in the day, and even though this stuff totally stands the test of time, the production on these two records does have its faults. The guitar tone on "Life. Love. Regret." is a little too rugged and a lot of the levels tend to peak out at light distortion, and "Ritual" has similar issues as far as rugged tones and a slight lack of density (there's not much of a bass presence at times), and it's overall slightly more separated in the mix... But still, worse sounding records are still churned out on a regular basis to this day, so... I don't think the sound is a problem in the least. The layout's nice. All black and white artwork with stylized imagery and band photos, every word of the lyrics from both records, and some liner notes about the band's impact from members of Most Precious Blood, The Locust, and Bane. If I could change anything about the layout, I'd say that at least the original record covers should appear here somewhere, and in a way it might have been nice if there was a way to have included the original content in some way, because especially regarding "Life. Love. Regret." the original layout had a lot of really important and personal content in the booklet. But the lyrics are what's really important, always personal, sometimes political, always well spoken, definitely a bit bitter... they don't really come like this anymore. A lot of these songs, at least when I was a younger, you hear the lyrics for the first time and you're just like, "Oh shit...", because it's that dead on, and for me that still stands regarding this band. "....I see no heaven I see no hell I just see us just us cling to the hope that it exists falling further with every prayer you whisper it won't save you it won't save you." If you've never heard them before, I don't even know what to say other than you are obligated to track this down if you are even remotely interested in the genre. And by "the genre", I do not mean anything that has to do with contemporary metalcore. These songs actually have feeling. There's actually meaning and emotion in this music. So just cut the shit and give this a listen. Mandatory. Now, the only question that remains, and anyone who has the original pressing of "Ritual" should damn sure know what I'm talking about: Where's the god damn magic twanger!? (9/10)
Running time - 61:29, Tracks: 17
[Notable tracks: D4, In the Name of Progression, Final Expression, Blanket, Zero Hour, My Time, Remain, Cold Front]
Indecision Records - http://www.indecisionrecords.com

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