It’s always a great pleasure for all of us to discover great new music. Especially, for me, when that new music is of the hardcore variety. However, in recent years hardcore has been dealt with its fair share of, well, rubbish. Lots of bands that sound like a copy of another band, whom are vaguely popular, leading to a fairly one dimensional wave of bands.
You do though get a select amount of diamonds in the rough, and 2013 has already seen the rise of one such case of this in the form of Palm Reader. Now we have another and the chances are that they may already follow you on Twitter! The Catharsis spent much of 2012 building up a passionate fan base on the internet, building excitement for their début full length release, ‘Romance‘.
Those of you who have been looking forward to this are certainly not going to be disappointed. Despite being dark and relentlessly aggressive, The Catharsis are managing to put the ‘good time’ element back into hardcore. This is one of the most instant albums you will hear all year, with catchy hook after catchy hook, after crushing breakdown. There’s absolutely no pissing around whatsoever on this album, and it’s such a refreshing change from the growing amount of mundane hardcore around today. ‘O’Recluse‘ and ‘Dead Man Talking‘ are definite highlights, but the track ‘Styx‘ sums this album up absolutely perfectly; aggressive yet ‘sing-a-long’ hardcore just meant to be played live in dirty, small, sweaty venues.
If you call yourself a hardcore fan and don’t yet own this album then there’s really something severely wrong. Listen to it. Love it. Tell all your friends about it.
Also, do make sure to catch The Catharsis live on tour with Heights and Black Dogs, they’re rather good (understatement).
