Reviews

With Honor’s full length debut on Victory records is marked by a change in sound. Where there was once a band who owed more to current revival youthful hardcore than anything else, there is now a band that should be sharing the stage with post-John K. Sampson Propagandhi and Stay Asleep era Bigwig.  With Honor still play melodic hardcore, but it is now more reliant on the melody as Todd Mackay relies less on screams and more on impassioned half-spoken vocals.  The ferocity and inventiveness that made the With Honor?The Distance split such a landmark just are not present on This Is Our Revenge.  But if Today’s Ashes, Tomorrow’s Empires is your favorite Propagandhi album (then you are an idiot because Less Talk, More Rock is top five best albums ever) then chances are you will love the direction With Honor has chosen to pursue.
 
Like Trumpets, the opening track, is a flawless song for the first minute and a half - fast, melodic hardcore, with memorable vocals.  But the song doesn’t end there, it continues with a halfhearted breakdown and some unremarkable gang vocals.  Likewise, the next song Plot Two starts interesting and inspiring.  Todd Mackay even breaks it down with an eloquent quivering indictment of an unfaithful scene, before ruining it all with the simple repeated message “This is our revenge.”  What is with that word all of a sudden?  Victory released two albums in the same month with it in the title, My Chem is riding the platinum wave on an album titled with it in it; all this during a time when we need to ask: Is revenge what we want? 
 
The song 20 Strong is an emotional tribute to WH’s most recent tour with Bane and Comeback Kid and besides being interesting with it’s Bane and CBK musical homages, it is totally worth reading the booklet for all the only-on-tour nicknames.
 
The album also loses some points for Pete Chilton’s design.  Sorry dude, I love you, but I can’t read pages four and five and staring at the last page makes me think that I bruised my retinas and there is blood pooling in front of my pupils.
 
Some great lyrics (“So when you need me I’ll be outside throwing rocks at the moon every night”), some mediocre, (“Some things are just the truth/ like how the sky is blue/ and wheels will always roll”) and a musical change that I just can’t get behind.  But as Gorilla Biscuits says ‘Hats off to bands that change.”  The new sound retains old elements and is sure to introduce With Honor to a new crowd of punks who probably never expected to see them.