Reviews

Somewhere along the line, Philly’s hardest sons traded their copies of Background Music in, and instead of reaching for We’re Down Till We’re Underground, they picked up One With The Underdogs.
 
Filled with breakdowns, beatdowns, and very little room for lyrical ingenuity, Blacklisted’s first full length is a pretty standard but well played run through hardcore clichés.  Better than We’re Unstoppable - their last Deathwish EP - but by no means anything groundbreaking, this will have Terror aficionados completely enthralled. 
 
It’s a bad sign when “Do You Feel?” a song one minute and sixteen seconds long drags like its an eon.  It’s a bad sign when the best track on the album is the first one, and it’s only a minute long.  That opener, “Tourist,” is what this entire album should be - short, sweet, fast with a beat, and some personal (ie. not super vague) lyrics.
 
It’s the final nail in the coffin of bad signs when you write a song about hitting your girlfriend, and it is unclear whether or not it is a cautionary tale, an imagined story, or just a tune about that one time you really knocked her one good.  No matter what the answer, Blacklisted should know that kids who like them are going to be singing along - Blacklisted is very much a pile-on, sing-along band.  Do you really want them chanting “Dry your eyes it’s only a bruise” back in your face.  Even if you know it is written from the POV of an abusive boyfriend, it’s still not an image I’d ever want to be responsible for, a roomful of boys shouting the chorus, “You’re a liar!”
 
Just when hardcore seems fast and young again, Blacklisted are there to make it all feel old and slow.