Black Friday '29 "The Escape" CD
[Gangstyle]
Fuck yes. Another winner from Gangstyle, baby. Heavy hardcore with just the right amount of metal chunkiness coming out of Germany. I really like the vocals too, as they're straight yells with a nice attitude and ring to 'em that's a little out of the ordinary. The music is pretty much straight in your face NYHC styled material with lots of thick chord progressions, hard hitting breaks, and basic structures. Only a couple of songs hit three minutes, so they drop one after another and keep things moving. Most of the tempos are pretty moderate and vary from a little more energetic and driving to the slower and mosh worthy. It's nothing new, but the songwriting kicks ass, and everyone should know by now that when you do this stuff right I'm a sucker for it. Well, these fuckers do it right, and I'm all over it! "Half Past Nine" is a little faster and the vocals get a very subtle tinge of melody to 'em, "Make My Day" has some traditional old school styled runs, "Pressure Release" is flat out powerful/memorable, and "Never Given Back" actually gets quite melodic - a real change of pace from all of the other songs. The recording is really strong as well. Everything is thick and heavy with a pretty good mix, etc. The vocal clarity is a big help, and the guitar tone is awesome. I'd like to hear more of a bass presence, and they could probably get a little more detail in the instrumentation somehow, but there are no gaps or anything, and it sounds full and resonant, so I'm not complaining there at all. The layout looks pretty nice and uses mostly black with some light brown coloring with dark imagery that uses a lot of distorted, bleak figures and is sort of hard to make out. The booklet's huge and folds out to reveal all of the lyrics and whatnot, which are all personal and just deal with your usual problems of being betrayed, or feelings of desperation and stuff like that. It's nothing new, but they get the job done and seem to be honest and sincere about it, there's nothing that puts me off, so I'm fine with their straightforward delivery. There's not one bad song on this thing, I'm really digging it. I needed this too, because I haven't heard that much good hardcore as of late, and this totally hits the spot. Imagine a musical mix of early Leeway, Madball, Turning Point, and Sick of it All or something like that. This kicks ass. Check it out, kids. (8/10)
Running time - 28:13, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: Kill This Dream, Can't Save You, Pressure Release, Recall]
Gangstyle Records - http://www.noizz.nl/gsr/

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