Alt-UK

Music, Film, and Gaming

Alex Healey

TRC – Nation

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The UK hardcore scene is currently so packed with bands, both good and bad, that attempting not to sound like anyone else is a difficult task indeed. One example of not falling into this trap, however, is TRC, a band that is refreshingly combining grime with hardcore, adding fresh new flavours within the hardcore scene. Now for me, when their 2011 album ‘Bright Lights‘ came out, the idea and potential was there, but the execution wasn’t. This was until they released the single ‘#TeamUK‘ (included as track 4 on ‘Nation‘), when they showed the world what they can really do, with fantastic patriotism at the same time. Now that we finally have new album ‘Nation‘, is their potential truly shown? The answer is most definitely a massive fuck yeah.

‘Nation‘ is packed front to back with 8/9 out of 10 songs with the exception of lead single ‘We Bring War’, which has to be a modest 9.6 out of 10; a relentless, full throttle rager of a song, just excellence in its purest form. TRC’s Charlie Wilson has to be up there with the best riff writers out there in the UK at the moment. His work on ‘Nation‘ is excellent on a very riff heavy album, there’s some very well executed rapped speeches, and the album also contains the best use of breakdowns on a hardcore album I’ve heard for a long time. The opening 2 tracks show how the band can excel with equally technical and bouncy instrumentation, just made to jump around like a daft bugger in packed sweaty venues.

Now a lot has been said about rap vocalist Chris Robson, whom I will get onto in just a moment. Right now I’d like to give some credit to the unsung harsh vocalist Anthony Carroll. Carroll’s raspy screamed vocals offer such a raw intensity to TRC’s music, adding such ferocity and venom to the tracks he features on. His vocals on the tracks ‘Motivator‘ and especially ‘We Bring War’ go fantastically with Robson’s vocals, which is what pushes the quality of these tracks over the edge. If there’s one criticism I have of this album, it would be Carroll’s underused vocals, which only feature on 4 tracks on the album. As stated earlier, Robson’s vocals have been talked about a lot with regards to this album, mainly because his vocals and lyrics are nothing short of amazing here, and this is what gives TRC their unique selling point. His style and sometimes, lyrical themes have split opinion on occasion, but this is what takes TRC’s music to a whole new dimension, and offers different themed songs not usually heard within UK hardcore, giving TRC yet another great stand out point. Robson delivers his lyrics with such passion and a real bite, which makes it very difficult to see why some people are H.A.T.E.R.S.

TRC definitely deserve a hell of a lot more credit than they get, and certainly should be playing in bigger venues than they currently are. They have produced an absolute stormer of an album in ‘Nation‘ and this is definitely one of the finest in a line of brilliant albums released in 2013. Make sure to catch them on their October/November tour, they’re playing enough dates, so you have no excuses.

The Catharsis – Romance

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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).

Your Demise – Cold Chillin’ EP

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Your Demise - Cold Chillin' EP

Your Demise are a band that, despite not having been around that long, have a few major career talking points. They’ve also developed a fairly large and loyal fan base too. With their original vocalist, George Noble, Your Demise produced some simple, yet effective hardcore. Noble left the band after their first album however, and was replaced with former Centurion frontman Ed McRae. This saw a slight change of direction for the band, in which they now began to focus a little more on melody. They then released ‘The Kids We Used To Be‘ studio album through Visible Noise in 2010, which comprises some of Your Demise’s best material to date. This led to much excitement about their last release ‘The Golden Age‘ which came in 2012, however, they took the melody aspect too far and ultimately released a dreadful album by their standards.

‘The Golden Age‘ saw somewhat of a backlash against Your Demise. Despite this, Your Demise still stuck up for ‘The Golden Age’, however I think the release of this new EP ‘Cold Chillin‘ proves otherwise. Right from the first minute of opening track ‘Karma‘, the lead single of the EP, you can just tell that this is well above the standard of ‘The Golden Age‘. The four tracks on this EP are on a par with some of the best material Your Demise’s have ever written.

‘Cold Chillin‘ has raised the standard, and therefore the anticipation for Your Demise’s next full length album, and it’s definitely very exciting to hear what comes next from the band.

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Pure Love – Anthems

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Pure Love - Anthems

‘I’m so sick of singing about hate’ cries Frank Carter, former front man of my favourite band ever. With that in mind, you can imagine how bitterly disappointed I was when Frank left Gallows. Fortunately though, Wade McNeil managed a superb job on the last Gallows album.

So, with that sightly awkward bit out of the way, ‘Anthems‘ is the first release from Carter’s new band, Pure Love. A fairly self-indulgent album title in my mind, especially given that there are only really 2 songs on here that you could consider as being actual anthems. Those songs are ‘Handsome Devils Club‘ and ‘Riot Song‘, other than these two though, this is a completely unoriginal album from a man that once produced genre defining classics with his old band.

It sounds as though they’ve just bought a Gaslight Anthem record, and said ‘Shall we have a pop at this? Maybe we could throw a Darkness riff or two in there as well‘. Perhaps Frank Carter wasn’t the genius he was touted to be after all. This album just screams many reasons at you as to why Frank Carter should never have left Gallows.

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Dropkick Murphys – Signed and Sealed in Blood

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Dropkick Murphys - Signed and Sealed in Blood

Album number 8 from Massachusetts’ favourite sons, Dropkick Murphys. If you don’t already know (you should), Dropkick Murphys are a band that blend punk rock with Irish folk music. This results in fast anthemic songs that are made to drink to.

Straight from the opening seconds of the first track, ‘The Boys are Back’, this is unmistakably the Murphys. Lead single ‘Rose Tattoo‘ is one the bands finest songs to date, and is the perfect encapsulation of this album. There’s a load of brilliant, catchy hooks on this album, none more so than with ‘On the Town’, a track which sums up the fun times vibe of this album. The most interesting song on here however is Dropkick Murphys’ attempt at a Christmas song, ‘The Season’s Upon Us’, an absolutely fantastic offering from the band that made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. It’s reminiscent of The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’.

Don’t ask questions, just down a cider and enjoy some great, fun, singalong punk rock songs.

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Black Veil Brides – Wretched and Devine: The Story of the Wild Ones

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Black Veil Brides - Wretched and Devine: The Story of the Wild Ones

It’s 2013, and we start off the year with a release from one of the most talked about and divisive bands around right now, Black Veil Brides. Black Veil Brides have developed a massive fan base in their short ascendancy, but with that has come a massive amount of haters too, and so this release was always likely to be a major talking point.

First off, I must say that I admire Black Veil Brides’ ambition with this record. It’s a nine track concept album, complete with incredibly high production values. The album takes you on a bit of a journey as well, especially with the 3 spoken word pieces, the ‘F.E.A.R Transmissions’, courtesy of Wil Francis (formerly of Aiden and now of William Control). Black Veil Brides have produced some of their strongest material here, with the leading single ‘In The End’ and the great guitar riff on the second track of the album, ‘I Am Bulletproof’. There are a couple of other decent tracks on here such as ‘Resurrect the Sun’ and ‘New Years Day’, but unfortunately this album also has its share of stinkers. As it does with most bands similar to them, the really bad songs come in the form of their more ballad bassed songs, such as ‘Done For You’ and ‘Lost It All’. These tracks are just dreary and weak.

On the whole I think this album had good ideas, just with a pretty weak execution. 19 tracks is just too many. Did the world, and even Black Veil Brides’ current fan base,  really need a 19 track concept album? Maybe if they had cut out the bad tracks and tweaked the average ones they may have been onto something good here. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

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Live Review: Parkway Drive, Emmure, The Word Alive, Structures @ Leeds University, November 16th 2012

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First up were Structures, a young band from Canada making their first trip over to the UK. They started developing a dedicated fanbase in 2011 after releasing their debut full length album ‘Divided By‘ through Sumerian Records, and I was surprised at just how many people in attendance were clearly already fans of this band. A big pit formed, and they had quite a few people singing their lyrics back to them, quite a rarity when you’re the first band on a four band bill. Sound wise the band was very tight, and the frontman got the audience as hyped up as he possibly could. As someone who’d not heard of them before they left me very impressed.

7/10

Second up was The Word Alive, a band that has been over here quite a few times, from Arizona USA. They play some fairly standard metalcore, nothing any metalcore fan wouldn’t have heard before. Although the band sounded decent, and the crowd in general seemed to dig them, they didn’t leave much of an impression on me like Structures did. Static performance, and no material that really resonated with me.

5/10

Next up was the main support act, New York heavy hitters, Emmure. Almost ten years of ferocious deathcore has seen them become one of the most divisive bands in metal today. People either seem to have massive love for the band, or massive hatred for the band. Luckily, the fairly young audience seemed to love them, and the band received a crowd reaction worthy of headliners. Their mixture of almost spoken lyrics, vicious growls, dissonant chords and signature breakdowns sounded massive in the fairly big venue, and went down a storm.

8/10

Then finally the band everyone had been waiting for took to the stage. Anyone who has seen this great Australian band before knows that they’re arguably the best and most fun live band around. This night was no exception, playing to the craziest crowd reaction I’ve ever seen. The high production values of the stageshow in terms of the enchanting lights and enormous projected backdrop just increased the experience tenfold. I went to a lot of shows in 2012, and with the exception of Sabbath at Download, this was the best I’ve been to. Parkway Drive is one of metalcores shining beacons, and they’ve set the standard for live performances. Incredible show.

10/10
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