Reviews

Lately, I feel like I've been encountering a lot of good hardcore. Normally this would not be a problem, but because it's hardcore, it is. To break it down, there are two major arenas of hardcore: good and bad. Bad hardcore sounds like noise; good hardcore sounds like music. Past that distinction, there is little else for me. Good hardcore can then only be separated by nuance: metal/rock/blues/etc-fusion, Black Flag-influence versus Minor Threat-influence, more chanting or more yelling, positive/anarchic/nihilistic/etc. message. These tiny differences only go so far in regards to quality, though. Therefore my problem is namely, what do I do with the bands that are good, but just not good enough?

One Win Choice's latest release, Never Suspend Disbelief, is just one illustration of this problem. I don't want to knock a good, tight, hard-working band just because I've more or less heard them before. It's hardcore: I've more or less heard it all before. But I can only listen to so many bands with competent lyricism, throaty front men and thrashy guitars set to the minimum speed and decibel requirement of hardcore.

For One Win Choice's musical effort, the sentence above is all you really need to know. The guitars, drums and bass all come out at various peaks scattered across the length of the album. There are plenty of catchy choruses and shout-a-long sections. Stand-out track "I Deny" does an unavoidably good and grabbing job of rolling smoothly and quickly through all of these moments. But so do most of the other songs. The overall sound created is tight, well-rehearsed and just on the edge of volatility without breaching it. It's all good, but it's also all generic.

The lyrics operate on the same basis. They're good, but faulted by a tendency toward vagueness. For example, I'm not exactly sure about the meaning behind "Bremen Six." The title probably refers to a group of six sailors (Jews, Communists, protestors-depending on your source) who, in 1935, boarded the "Bremen" ship and tore down the Nazi flag it bore. The lyrical content, decrying political and social ignorance and rallying positive action, provides a thin string, in concept, to those sailors. Beyond that, I'm not sure what sets this group of lyrics apart from the others on the album--nothing is inherently "Bremen Six" about them. Every song highlights these same ideals: we're always fighting corruption, greed, injustice and hatred while chasing peace, hope, joy and change amidst blood, blindness and lies. TV, the media and complacency are bad; revolution, freedom and community are good.

All these elements make for a good hardcore album. But ultimately I have to ask myself, so what? There are a lot of good hardcore albums. While punk's loud and feisty little brother genre may be doing well as a whole, unfortunately it means the individual bands are going to have to work that much harder to stand out.