This Pennsylvania band tears through 10 tracks of old school hardcore with a twist in 17 minutes. For the most part their style is straightforward hardcore with basic song structures and the types of chord progressions you've heard a million times at this point. The vocal shouts and huge gang backups also do little to distinguish this band from the hordes of similar acts that are out there. Now, when I said "old school hardcore with a twist", the "twist" in question is rather small. There are only a few moments on the disc that really point towards something more than your average three chord, one-minute hardcore song. "Practicing Uncertainty" is one of the longer tracks, starting out with a darker bassline and a really powerful build complete with feedback and half-distorted guitars, plodding percussion, and hints of melody. I was really hoping the entire disc would be more like this, but no dice... "Broken Record" throws in a few brief spurts of noisy dissonance, and I mean very brief. In "Boston" some of the chords are a little bit more rocked out, giving a slight punk sort of edge to the song. And then "76 Hours" is musically slightly more upbeat, if lyrically the opposite, and easily the most memorable track herein. The production is pretty good. The drums sound great, there's some bass back there, the guitars are a little thin but they work, and the vocals are nicely placed right in with the instruments. I wouldn't particularly change anything other than maybe giving the bass more dominance in relation to the guitars and drums. Other than that, leave things be. The layout looks pretty damn cool. Everything is pink, red, and white, which is unusual, but it works. The booklet is pink, and then the outer cover is red ink printed on semi-transparent white vellum. The imagery is strange, the panel underneath the vellum shows a girl's face, and the back shows a very subtle image of a girl's lower midsection and she's pulling her underwear off - all toned in shades of pink. The imagery starts to make a little more sense when you realize that all of the lyrics revolve around some sort of twisted relationship gone wrong type of situation, going so far as to dictate "No thanks to her." at the end of the thanks list. Therefore, I can't say I'm that into the lyrics, simply because I've seen this stuff a million times... "With wondering eyes of blue she turns to me to tell me sweet nothings, And that's what they were worth, I'd cut myself into pieces for her, Ready to give all I can give..." Ehhh, no thanks. There's definitely potential here, but "heard it all before" music combined with uninteresting "heard it all before" lyrics doesn't really win me over 100%, even if they are good at what they do. Hopefully they'll develop their more energetic and creative side in the future, at least on a musical level.
[Deathwish Inc.]
Running time - 16:54, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Practicing Uncertainty, Inconsiderate Me, 76 Hours]
Deathwish Inc. - http://www.deathwishinc.com
